QA Engineer

Salary: £40,000 - 70,000 per year

Requirements:

• Demonstrable experience as a QA / Test Engineer within an agile, product-focused environment.
• Hands-on test automation experience across API and UI/E2E layers (e.g. Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, RestAssured or similar).
• Strong grounding in test design techniques and risk-based prioritisation (e.g. RICE / MoSCoW).
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines as quality gates.
• Working knowledge of contract testing and API assurance (e.g. Pact, Postman) independent of the UI.
• Familiarity with non-functional testing: performance, load, resilience, security and accessibility.
• Confident with defect management and test tooling (e.g. JIRA, Zephyr/Xray, TestRail).
• Sound understanding of test data and environment management, including compliant, representative data.
• Able to read and reason about application code sufficiently to design effective tests and pair with engineers.
• Strong communication skills; able to translate quality signals into clear, actionable insight for the squad and stakeholders.
• ISTQB certification (Foundation as a minimum; Advanced desirable) or equivalent demonstrable expertise.
• Relevant degree or equivalent experience in a technical discipline.
• Agile / Scrum accreditation (desirable).
• Certifications in test automation, performance or security testing (desirable).

Responsibilities:

• Own the test approach for the squads product area and embed quality across the lifecycle rather than at an end-stage gate.
• Contribute to story refinement and own the testing and quality content of the Definition of Done.
• Ensure acceptance criteria are testable and unambiguous before work is committed.
• Apply risk-based prioritisation to focus test effort where defect impact and likelihood are highest.
• Design, maintain and execute functional, integration and end-to-end test cases traceable to acceptance criteria.
• Perform exploratory and edge-case testing to surface defects that scripted coverage misses.
• Validate cross-browser, cross-device and cross-environment behaviour as relevant to the product.
• Build and maintain automated test suites across unit-support, API and UI/E2E layers and integrate them into the CI/CD pipeline as quality gates.
• Treat automated checks as fast feedback that blocks regressions before merge or release.
• Balance the automation pyramid and keep the suite reliable, low-flake and maintainable.
• Own contract testing for services the squad consumes and produces, supporting a contract-first design approach.
• Validate API behaviour, error handling, versioning and backward compatibility independently of the UI.
• Coordinate or execute performance, load, resilience, security and accessibility testing appropriate to the products risk profile.
• Flag non-functional risks early and ensure they carry acceptance criteria, not just functional ones.
• Operate as an embedded member of a cross-functional squad, pairing with engineers and product to build in quality.
• Champion whole-team ownership of quality and coach the squad on testability, test data and defect prevention.
• Contribute to retrospectives with quality insights and improvement actions.
• Triage, log, prioritise and track defects to closure with clear reproduction steps and severity.
• Manage test data and test environment readiness.
• Maintain quality signals and report status in a form the squad and stakeholders can act on.
• Provide release-readiness assurance and clear, evidence-based go / no-go input.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement using quality insights from testing and retrospectives.

Technologies:

• API
• CI/CD
• Cypress
• E2E
• Embedded
• ISTQB
• Support
• JIRA
• Playwright
• Postman
• Security
• Selenium
• UX UI Design

More:

We are SThree, a global organisation building modern products in cross-functional squads where quality is a whole-team responsibility and testers are engineers in their own right, not a downstream gate. This is a permanent QA Engineer role based in London or Glasgow, working hybrid with an expectation of 1 to 2 days a week in the office, with additional days depending on activity such as design workshops. The salary is £45,000 to £55,000 based on skills and experience. We offer hybrid working options for flexibility, bonus linked to company and personal performance, 28 days holiday plus public holidays with an annual leave purchase scheme, private healthcare, discounted dental insurance and health cashback, paid volunteering days and caregiver leave, and access to retail discounts and our company share scheme.

last updated 36 week of 2026