Lead Test Engineer

Job summary

Are you passionate about quality and driven to make a real impact? We are looking for talented quality professionals to join the award-winning Home Office Quality Assurance and Testing (QAT) Team. Quality is at the heart of everything we do. As one of the largest quality engineering functions in government, our shared service is delivered through a community of over 750 QA professionals, supporting critical digital services that help protect and serve the UK. Our strong culture of continuous improvement drives innovation in the way quality is delivered and assured. Working at the forefront of modern engineering practices, you'll help shape and advance quality approaches within complex DevOps environments, including cloud-based platforms and services.

You'll be joining a highly skilled, collaborative, and supportive team of quality specialists that is recognised as one of the best in the industry. Whether you are looking to deepen your technical expertise, lead quality transformation, or contribute to nationally important services, you'll find exciting opportunities to grow and make a difference.

These roles are available across a number of high-profile portfolios, including:

• Police and Public Protection Technology (PPPT)
• Homeland Security Group
• Home Office Biometrics

If you're passionate about quality engineering and want to help deliver services that matter to millions of people, we'd love to hear from you.

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. Where this is the case, employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in the office . Applicants can raise any queries to the email address at the bottom of the advert.

Watch this short video to hear from members of Home Office Digital talking about the projects they work on and their experience of working here: Working for Home Office Digital.

Recruitment Events

We are hosting two online recruitment events, where you can find out more about our roles, working for Home Office Digital and how to apply. Register your interest on the links below:

Session 1: How to apply - 8th September at 1pm: Home Office Digital: How to write a strong application Tickets, Tuesday, September 8 • 1 PM - 1:4…

Session 2: The interview process - 10th September at 1pm: Understanding Home Office Digital interviews Tickets, Thursday, September 10 • 1 PM - 1:45 PM GMT…

Job description

Home Office Digital designs, builds and develops services for the rest of the department and for government. Every year our systems support up to 3 million visa applications, checks on 100 million border crossings, up to 8 million passport applications and deliver 140 million police checks on people, vehicles and

property.

As a Lead Test Engineer , you will decide and drive the test engineering approach within your programme area. You will decide and implement approaches to assure, measure and build quality into every phase of the software development life cycle. You will define and implement product level test engineering strategies in large scale or complex projects while ensuring that these are aligned to portfolio level Test Engineering approaches and follow QAT Test Engineering principles. You will also be actively contributing to portfolio level Test Architecture.

You will be responsible for solving engineering challenges of QAT approaches adopted in projects that you directly work with or are consulted for. This involves developing new frameworks, reviewing, and enhancing existing frameworks to help deliver scalable solutions.

Person specification

Main Responsibilities

• Ownership of existing test frameworks and actively reviewing them, identifying need for new frameworks, and delivering these at scale.
• Leading and coaching a team of test engineers and helping solve technical challenges that the team may require assistance with, evaluating efficacy of test engineering processes across projects and suggesting improvements. Promoting convergence, creating shared capabilities and data driven approaches within test engineering.
• Embracing innovation - evaluating tools and recommending approaches that can benefit testing. For instance ones used for virtualisation, data mocking , contract testing or other automated integration testing techniques, and deciding tools and approaches for automated test data management, test results aggregation and release management. Enabling precise, real-time reports of automation test runs and also roll-up reports.
• Managing test infrastructure usage and deciding approach to running distributed, parallel tests. Using container & cloud technology to orchestrate faster, scalable tests while optimising costs.
• Working with teams to promote use of code scan, code quality, accessibility testing and observability tools.
• Participating in the QAT Test Engineering community as well as QAT recruitment to help it grow.

Working Pattern

Due to the business requirements of this role, it is only available on a full-time basis. However, compressed hours are available.

Essential Skills

• Programming using Java to write secure, reusable, and maintainable automated tests and test utilities. You should be able to use concepts like thread management, synchronisation, resource, and memory management to increase the efficiency of test engineering solutions and be able to use scripting languages like Bash or PowerShell (Lead essential criteria).
• Using and implementing tools like Selenium, RestAssured, Serenity BDD (or similar), build tools like Maven or Gradle, code management tools like git.
• Using and implementing unit test frameworks like JUnit, assertion libraries, data serialisation tools, security best practices like OWASP Top 10 and standards such as WCAG to design automated accessibility tests.
• Extensively using CI/CD tools for pipeline automation and a solid understanding of release pipeline concepts. Familiarity with containerization platforms like Docker and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
• Using and implementing POM test design pattern and SOLID code design principle.
• Implementing coding guidelines and standards with a solid understanding of protocols and architectural styles involved in implementing tests.
• Ability to actively engage with performance testing engineers and work alongside them to identify performance bottlenecks. Ability to read, interpret and articulate performance reports.

SFIA capability framework

Skills for the Information Age (SFIA) version 8 is the technical framework that sets the standard capability and development of all levels in the Home Office. This is a link to the capability framework: All skills A - Z English (sfia-online.org) .

We use set SFIA technical skills to form our interview questions and we will assess you against these technical skills during the selection process.

The essential skills listed above are reflective of the Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession Career Framework (based on the industry standard SFIA framework). Use the SFIA Levels of responsibility to understand what would be expected for each technical skills listed below.

• Strategic Planning (ITSP) – Level 4
• Domain Experience – Level 4
• Test, Analysis, Design and Execution – Level 3
• Automation and Tooling – Level 4
• Performance Testing – Level 4
• Integration and Assurance – Level 3

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving
• Making Effective Decisions

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Strategic Planning (ITSP) – Level 4
• Domain Experience – Level 4
• Test, Analysis, Design and Execution – Level 3
• Automation and Tooling – Level 4
• Performance Testing – Level 4
• Integration and Assurance – Level 3

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £62,732, Home Office contributes

£18,173 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Why work for us...

Find out more information at : Benefits - Home Office Careers, but some of the primary ones are:

• A Civil Service Pension with employer contribution rates of at least 28.97%.
• In-year reward scheme for one-off or sustained exceptional personal or team achievements.
• 25 days annual leave on appointment, rising with service.
• 8 days of public holidays, plus 1 additional privilege day.
• Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office.

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Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete a CV and 1000-word personal statement:

• CV – include a brief employment history outlining for each role, the organisation, job title, dates in post, and key responsibilities and achievements. Any recent employment gaps should be explained. A second section should set out the skills and experience most relevant to this role, drawing on your career, training, and other relevant activities without repeating the employment history. Focus on the evidence that best demonstrates your capability to meet the role requirements.
• Personal statement - this should present a clear and coherent narrative explaining why you are applying, what you would bring to the role, and how your experience meets the essential criteria. Use well ‑ chosen examples to illustrate your impact, drawing on STAR ‑ style thinking where helpful, but ensure the statement reads as a single, flowing document rather than a set of isolated responses.

To ensure you are assessed on merit alone, we ask you to anonymise your application. This means removing personal identifiers such as your name, age, and place of education. You do not need to remove your employment history, job titles, or any information about your work.

Watch our three short videos on how to apply for our roles: Applying - Home Office Careers.

Problems during the application process

If you experience problems accessing this advert, or you think you’ve made a mistake on an initial application, please contact hocandidates.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk, including the vacancy reference, at least two working days before the vacancy closes. Further information can be found on our website .

Do not create or attempt to submit another application, online test or use a different Civil Service Jobs account to proceed as this would be in violation of the candidate declaration.

Sift Stage

The sift will be held on the CV and Personal Statement. Please read the essential skills for this position carefully. We will only consider those who meet the listed requirements.

In the event of a high number of applications received, an initial sift may be held on the Personal Statement only.

Interview Stage

Candidates reaching the