Senior Software Test Engineer

Join ONI and Explore the Boundaries of Scientific Discovery!

At ONI, we are driven by a profound mission: to propel scientific discovery and combat diseases by granting everyone the ability to visualize, comprehend, and share the intricate microscopic details of life. Our revolutionary Aplo Scope and Nanoimager platforms stand at the forefront of advancing cellular studies on a molecular level, making substantial contributions to the evolution of scientific knowledge.

We are seeking an enthusiastic and devoted Senior Software Test and Dev Ops Engineer to join our pioneering team located in Oxford. We believe in the power of relentless curiosity and the pursuit of excellence, and we invite you to join us in shaping the future of scientific exploration and healthcare breakthroughs.

In this role you will build intuitive, scalable, and high-performance software solutions for the automation of super-resolution microscopy. You'll work closely with Product, UI, UX, QA, image analysis and backend engineers to deliver exceptional user experiences while leveraging modern AI-powered development practices. This role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys solving complex technical problems, takes ownership of product outcomes, and thrives in a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

● Design, execute, and maintain manual test plans and test cases for embedded software across hardware/firmware/software boundaries.

● Perform functional, regression, integration, and system-level testing on embedded devices and their companion software/tools.

● Lead release testing activities

● Identify, document, and track defects through to resolution; work closely with firmware and software engineers to reproduce and root-cause issues.

● Contribute to and grow our test automation efforts, including writing and maintaining automated test scripts (Playwright experience a bonus).

● Set up and manage test environments, lab hardware, and test rigs for embedded devices.

● Mentor junior QA engineers and champion testing best practices across the team.

● Help build, maintain, and improved CI/CD pipelines and deployment.

● Collaborate with product managers to understand requirements and design test cases that adequately test features in a way that is representative of real use cases.

● Continuously improve QA processes and procedures to enhance overall product quality and team productivity

● Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).

● Minimum of 5 years as a Software Test/QA Engineer or similar role in software development.

● Hands-on experience testing embedded software or firmware (hardware-in-the-loop, device-level testing, etc.).

● Working knowledge of DevOps practices and tools (CI/CD pipelines, Git, Docker, Jenkins/GitLab CI, or similar).

● Experience of containerisation technologies such as Docker.

● Excellent troubleshooting skills and attention to detail.

● Strong written and verbal communication skills.

● Experience working in Agile/SCRUM software development.

Essential behaviours: We're looking for engineers who:

● Take ownership and deliver results.

● Build software with quality, simplicity, and maintainability in mind.

● Enjoy collaborating across disciplines.

● Are curious, continuously learning, and open to adopting new technologies.

● Embrace AI as part of modern software engineering.

● Care about customer outcomes as much as technical excellence.

● Experience in life sciences industry

● Experience with Playwright or other web/UI test automation frameworks.

● ISTQB or similar QA certification.

● Experience administering or improving DevOps pipelines.

● Experience with Kubernetes or container orchestration platforms.

● Cloud platform experience (GCP preferred, AWS or Azure also considered).

● Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep or similar)

● Knowledge of performance, load and security testing.

● Experience implementing code quality and security tooling (e.g. SonarQube, Snyk, Dependabot).

● Experience with monitoring and observability platforms (Application Insights, Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, etc.).

● Experience of release management and deployment automation.