Agile Test Lead

They see strong test automation as a cornerstone of the rigour they need for real Agile working.

You’d be joining a team of several other Lead Testers, spread across several development teams. These teams would look to you to provide QA leadership, and ensure strong testing structures are in place. The teams span several websites, Applications, Apps, APIs and ticketing systems.

Several of the platforms you would be testing on are of an extremely vast scale, so it’s essential that you have worked on a large scale, complex project before – millions of users are interacting with them everyday to give you an idea.

The purpose of the role

They’re looking for each person to join them to have a specialism, which are as follows: Cross Platform Integration, Performance Testing, Automation Testing and Functional Testing. As a specialist you’d be tasked with promoting best practices, continuous improvement and efficient reuse of testing frameworks and infrastructure across all delivery streams. There’ll be a real focus on delivering high quality automation test solutions.

Each Lead will be responsible for up to 20 testers, and tasked with making decisions based on long term financial benefit to the company. You’ll be tasked with driving efficiency by creating test tools and processes, as well as defining and monitoring the quality standards of the products being developed.

What would I be accountable for?

You’ll be expected to provide both technical leadership and strategic direction to the test team. This will be by assuring that deliveries have been tested and meet stakeholder requirements, as well as ensuring the solution meets timescale, budget and performance standards.

As previously mentioned they are looking for Leads who are specialists. You’d be expected to champion a specific discipline from one of the following:

• Cross Platform Integration – by co-ordinating internal integration efforts across several pipelines. By also developing effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders and witness testing and assurance of 3^rd party deliverables.
• Performance and non-functional – driving performance testing and robustness of products. As well as implementing non-functional testing standards through all stages of the life cycle.
• Automation – by driving test efficiency by developing processes and reusable testing frameworks and tooling, for automation testing.
• Functional – by defining processes and standards to ensure software function in accordance with agreed acceptance criteria.

What experience do I need?

It’s key that you have an expert knowledge of industry testing techniques, methodologies and best practices, as well as a broad knowledge of Agile planning and project management tools and techniques. You’ll be expected to provide technical leadership and strategic direction, as well as sharing your in-depth knowledge of automation practices and frameworks. You’ll be testing the integration of internal and external websites, as well as back office transactional systems, so will have prior experience here.

A degree in a related field would be a bonus, whilst you’d need to have an expert knowledge of test artefacts, well formed test scripts, test execution, test metric and test review processes.

They work with the following technologies:

Selenium, Playwright, MTM, TFS, ATDD/TDD/BDD, SQL Server, .NET, SpecFlow, exploratory testing etc.

In return for the above they’re offering up to £650 a day, inside or IR35, as well as a flexible working policy (once a week in their Central London office). The contract is forecast to run for two years.

This is a condensed version of the spec they have shared with me. I’m happy to share the more in-depth version after a conversation.