Senior Test Engineer

Salary: £? - ? per year

Requirements:

• SC clearance
• Experience with automated testing frameworks, including Playwright and Jest
• Skills in data validation testing
• Experience with load and performance testing for bulk uploads
• Experience testing CI/CD pipelines
• Expertise in test automation using JavaScript-based frameworks such as WebdriverIO, Playwright, or Cypress
• Familiarity with open-source JavaScript libraries or frameworks for API testing, or Postman
• Experience with JMeter or k6 for load and performance testing
• Experience with continuous integration pipelines using Jenkins and AWS, or Azure DevOps (ADO)
• Expertise in GitHub
• Experience using exploratory testing techniques to focus on areas of greatest risk
• SFIA Level 5 testing capability

Responsibilities:

• Define, own, and communicate test strategies aligned with delivery, business risk, and government service standards.
• Select and tailor manual, automated, exploratory, and risk-based test approaches for complex systems and integrations.
• Advise delivery and product leadership on test scope, entry and exit criteria, and quality risks.
• Balance assurance with pragmatic, proportionate testing within agile delivery constraints.
• Lead the design and evolution of automated UI, API, or service-level test frameworks aligned with the teams technology stack.
• Decide what to automate, taking value, maintainability, and risk into account.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines and advise teams on improving feedback cycles.
• Evaluate and recommend DEFRA community testing tools, frameworks, and practices.
• Plan, build, and execute non-functional testing, including performance, accessibility, security, resilience, and interoperability.
• Work with specialists and suppliers to ensure appropriate coverage when tools or expertise are shared.
• Interpret test results and explain their business and user impact.
• Ensure non-functional testing evidence supports confident release decisions.

Technologies:

• API
• AWS
• Azure
• CI/CD
• Cypress
• DevOps
• GitHub
• Support
• JavaScript
• Jenkins
• Jest
• JMeter
• Playwright
• Postman
• Security
• SharePoint
• UX UI Design
• Cloud

More:

We are recruiting a Senior Test Engineer for beta work on the MEL Data Store project. The project will deliver a secure, long-term digital solution to collect, store, validate, analyse, and report Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning data from Landscape Recovery projects. It will replace SharePoint- and spreadsheet-based submissions with user-centred design, robust data management workflows, an external-user submission tool, and a central datastore intended to support 20–30 years of programme delivery. The current processes are described as creating legal, financial, and reputational risks for Natural England and the wider Defra Group. The role is remote, with a stated rate of £473. Additional vetting is required and may extend the usual onboarding timeline.

last updated 39 week of 2026