Location
London Borough of Croydon

Hours
Full Time - compressed hours available

Salary
£62,732 - £69,006 (National) / £66,732 - £73,406 (London)

About the Role
Are you passionate about quality and driven to make a real impact? Join the award-winning Home Office Quality Assurance and Testing (QAT) Team, one of the largest quality engineering functions in government, supporting critical digital services that help protect and serve the UK. You will work at the forefront of modern engineering practices, shaping and advancing quality approaches within complex DevOps environments, including cloud-based platforms and services.

As a Lead Test Engineer, you will decide and drive the test engineering approach within your programme area, implementing strategies to assure, measure, and build quality into every phase of the software development life cycle. You will define product-level test engineering strategies for large-scale or complex projects, ensuring alignment with portfolio-level approaches and QAT principles. You will contribute actively to portfolio-level Test Architecture and solve engineering challenges by developing and enhancing test frameworks to deliver scalable solutions.

You will lead and coach a team of test engineers, promote innovation by evaluating and recommending tools and approaches for automation, virtualisation, data mocking, contract testing, and test data management. You will manage test infrastructure, leveraging container and cloud technologies to orchestrate faster, scalable tests while optimising costs. Additionally, you will promote the use of code scan, code quality, accessibility testing, and observability tools across teams.

This role offers exciting opportunities to deepen your technical expertise, lead quality transformation, and contribute to nationally important services within high-profile portfolios such as Police and Public Protection Technology, Homeland Security Group, and Home Office Biometrics.

Working arrangements may include a combination of office and home-based working, with a minimum of 60% office presence expected where business needs allow.

Experience
Proven experience programming in Java to write secure, reusable, and maintainable automated tests and utilities, including thread management, synchronisation, resource, and memory management. Experience with scripting languages such as Bash or PowerShell.
Hands-on experience using and implementing tools like Selenium, RestAssured, Serenity BDD (or similar), Maven or Gradle, and git.
Experience with unit test frameworks such as JUnit, assertion libraries, data serialization tools, and designing automated accessibility tests following standards like WCAG.
Extensive use of CI/CD tools for pipeline automation and understanding of release pipeline concepts.
Familiarity with containerization platforms like Docker and orchestration tools such as Kubernetes.
Knowledge of POM test design pattern, SOLID code design principles, coding guidelines, protocols, and architectural styles involved in testing.
Ability to collaborate with performance testing engineers to identify bottlenecks and interpret performance reports.
Experience leading and coaching teams, evaluating test engineering processes, and promoting shared capabilities and data-driven approaches.

About you
Innovative and proactive in embracing new tools and approaches to improve testing efficiency and quality.
Strong leadership and communication skills to guide and support test engineering teams.
Committed to continuous improvement and quality excellence within complex digital environments.
Ability to work collaboratively across teams and contribute to a supportive, high-performing community.
Adaptable to working in a hybrid environment with a focus on delivering nationally important digital services.

Qualifications
Relevant technical skills aligned with the Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession Career Framework and SFIA version 8 levels:
- Strategic Planning (ITSP) – Level 4
- Domain Experience – Level 4
- Test, Analysis, Design and Execution – Level 3
- Automation and Tooling – Level 4
- Performance Testing – Level 4
- Integration and Assurance – Level 3

Security Check (SC) clearance is required, normally requiring 5 years UK residency in the past 5 years (exceptions may apply).

Applicants should be able to demonstrate behaviours including Communicating and Influencing, Changing and Improving, and Making Effective Decisions.

Applicants must be eligible to work in the UK and meet nationality and security requirements as outlined by the Home Office.