QA Engineer - #2091810

The Quality Assurance Engineer plays a central role in ensuring the delivery of high-quality, secure, and reliable software across our engineering squads. This role encompasses both manual and automated testing, covering functional, integration, regression, performance, and AI-driven behaviours as we adopt intelligent agent systems and features. Working closely with the team, you will design robust test strategies, develop automated test suites, perform exploratory testing, and ensure that quality gates are built into every stage of the delivery lifecycle. You will be instrumental in shaping how we test modern cloud-native, AI-enhanced services and ensure that testing practices scale as the platform grows.

The QA Engineer is essential to ensuring that the organisation delivers high-quality, secure, and trustworthy software as we scale across multiple autonomous squads. With AI-first engineering and agent-based workflows becoming core to our solutions, this role ensures that all features AI-driven or traditional are thoroughly validated, safe, reliable, and ready for production. You will help shape the future of quality engineering in an AI-enabled organisation.

This is a full time, permanent role working on a hybrid basis with 3 days per week in Manchester.

Core responsibilities:

Test Planning & Quality Strategy

• Define and execute comprehensive test plans covering manual, automated, functional, and non-functional testing.
• Ensure testing covers requirements, acceptance criteria, security considerations, and architectural guidance.
• Contribute to story refinement by identifying test scenarios, edge cases, and risks early.
• Be an advocate for quality engineering best practices within the squad.

Manual Testing & Exploratory Analysis

• Conduct manual functional testing across web, API, microservices, and agent-based features.
• Perform exploratory testing to uncover defects related to logic, user flows, AI responses, or edge cases.
• Document and reproduce defects clearly, collaborating closely with engineers on resolutions.

Automated Testing Development

• Design, build, and maintain automated test suites for regression, integration, performance and end-to-end testing.
• Develop test scripts using modern automation frameworks (e.g. Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Postman/Newman, or API automation tools).
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines in partnership with SRE and engineers.
• Implement automated validations for AI components, such as output consistency checks, guardrail tests, or behavioural evaluation patterns.

Quality Engineering & Shift-Left Practices

• Work closely with engineers to embed quality and testing considerations early in the SSDLC.
• Participate in code reviews where applicable (e.g. test code, coverage considerations).
• Ensure compliance with secure-by-design and SSDLC testing practices.
• Develop and maintain clear documentation for testing strategies, test cases, and automation frameworks.

Test Data, Environments & Tooling

• Manage test data creation, anonymisation, and maintenance for manual and automated testing.
• Validate deployments in test and staging environments before production releases.
• Support observability-driven debugging by analysing logs, metrics, traces, and AI evaluation outputs.
• Contribute to ongoing improvements in testing tooling, frameworks, and automation pipelines.

Collaboration & Continuous Improvement

• Work with Product Owners to clarify acceptance criteria and ensure appropriate testing depth.
• Collaborate with the Scrum Master to ensure testing is integrated into sprints effectively.
• Communicate quality risks, defect trends, and readiness assessments to stakeholders.
• Identify opportunities to improve QA processes, automation coverage, and AI testing methods.
• Share opportunities for the squad to improve its approach to iterative product quality.

Skills & Experience

Essential:

• Practical experience in both manual and automated testing of modern web or cloud-native systems.
• Strong understanding of software testing methods: functional, regression, integration, exploratory, and performance testing.
• Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks (e.g., Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, REST API automation tools).
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and integrating automated tests into deployment workflows.
• Experience testing APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Awareness of secure coding, security testing basics, and data privacy considerations.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with excellent attention to detail.
• Ability to work effectively within Agile squads and cross-functional environments.

Desirable:

• Exposure to AI testing methods (e.g., validating LLM outputs, RAG consistency, AI behaviour evaluation).
• Experience using AI-powered QA tools or test-generation frameworks.
• Knowledge of cloud environments (AWS/Azure) and containerised applications.
• Experience with performance and load testing tools (e.g. JMeter, k6, Locust).
• Understanding of contract testing (e.g., Pact).
• Familiarity with observability tools (e.g., Grafana, OpenTelemetry).