Senior QA/Test EngineerLocation: Devon (this is not fully remote role and will require regular weekly visits to the office)Salary: up to £50kWe are seeking a dynamic and experienced Senior QA Engineer to join our team. As the first dedicated QA professional, you will be responsible for establishing and evolving our quality assurance practices, working closely with development teams to ensure high quality product delivery. This is a hands-on role where you’ll be directly involved in testing, while also building out the QA function, driving automation, and advocating for best practices across the software development lifecycle. You will play a pivotal role in shifting QA "left" by integrating quality checks early in the development process, ensuring continuous improvement in our release cycles, and driving a culture of quality throughout the company. Responsibilities:Establish QA Processes: Design, implement, and scale QA processes and best practices from scratch to ensure high-quality product releases. Hands-on Testing: Perform hands-on testing, including functional, regression, integration, performance, and exploratory testing, to validate product functionality and stability. Test Automation: Build and maintain automated test frameworks and suites to support continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) pipelines. Push Left on QA: Collaborate with software engineers early in the development process to ensure quality is built into the product from day one. Team Leadership: Over time, grow and lead a high-performing QA team, mentoring junior QA engineers and fostering a culture of quality and collaboration. Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, developers, and DevOps teams to ensure clear communication and understanding of QA goals, timelines, and requirements. Defect Management: Own and manage the defect lifecycle, from identifying and reporting issues to working with development teams on swift resolutions. Performance and Scalability Testing: Implement performance testing strategies to ensure that our applications meet scalability and performance standards. Documentation: Create and maintain clear documentation for test cases, QA processes, and defect management protocols. Experience: 5+ years of hands-on experience in QA, with at least 2 years in a lead or senior role where you helped establish or scale QA functions. Testing Expertise: Proven experience in manual testing, automation frameworks for web and mobile (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, or similar), and performance testing tools. Automation Skills: Strong proficiency in building and maintaining automated test suites for web, mobile, and API testing. Shift Left Experience: Demonstrated ability to work closely with development teams to shift QA "left" and integrate quality early in the development process. Collaboration: Experience working in cross-functional teams in an Agile environment with developers, DevOps, and product teams. Technical Acumen: Solid understanding of software development, testing methodologies, and CI/CD practices. Knowledge of version control (e.g., Git) and build tools. Problem-Solving: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a detail oriented approach to identifying issues. Leadership: Experience mentoring or leading QA professionals and building a collaborative, high-performance QA culture. Qualifications Programming Skills: Familiarity with scripting or programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, JavaScript) to contribute to automation efforts. Cloud Experience: Experience testing in cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Azure) and familiarity with microservices architecture. Security Testing: Knowledge of security testing practices to ensure compliance with security requirements. ISTQB Certification: Certification in software testing or quality assurance (e.g., ISTQB)
