Quality Engineering (QE) Architect/Lead - York (2/3 days) - 12 months
Role
QE Architect is the strategic and hands-on Quality Engineering leader responsible for defining, architecting, and governing the enterprise-wide quality engineering capability across the Tech Transformation portfolio. The role enables a product-led delivery model by embedding continuous testing, automation-first, shift-left quality practices, risk-based assurance, and flow engineering principles throughout the software development life cycle.
Experience & Qualifications
- 12+ years of experience in Quality Engineering, Software Engineering or Test Automation.
- Minimum 5 years' operating as QE Architect/Principal Quality Engineer or Enterprise QE Lead level.
- Proven experience designing and scaling enterprise automation frameworks.
- Demonstrable expertise implementing Quality Engineering capabilities across large transformation portfolios.
- Strong experience with cloud, APIs, enterprise integration and data platform testing.
- Experience supporting Agile, Product-led and DevOps delivery models.
- Experience implementing TDD, BDD and Continuous Testing practices.
- Experience within Financial Services, Insurance or highly regulated industries preferred.
Key Responsibilities
1. QE Strategy, Architecture & Transformation
- Define and maintain the Tech Transformation Quality Engineering Architecture and target-state quality operating model.
- Establish enterprise standards for automation, continuous testing, quality gates, test observability, and release assurance.
- Drive adoption of engineering-led quality practices aligned to DevOps and Flow Engineering principles.
- Design scalable QE frameworks that support Digital, Workbench, Data, AI and Integration platforms.
- Define and govern end-to-end integration testing to ensure seamless data flow, business process integrity, and operational reliability across core Policy, Claims, D365, Power Platform, API, and downstream enterprise systems
- Create reusable quality engineering assets, accelerators and reference architectures to increase delivery efficiency across programmes.
- Partner with Architecture, Engineering and Product leadership to embed quality from ideation through production.
2. Automation Architecture & Continuous Testing
- Architect and evolve enterprise automation frameworks covering UI, API, Data, Integration, AI and Non-Functional testing.
- Drive automation-first delivery ensuring automated validation is Embedded throughout CI/CD pipelines.
- Define testing strategies across the testing pyramid, ensuring automation is implemented at the most effective layer.
- Establish standards for:
- UI automation
- API automation
- Contract testing
- Data quality testing
- Integration testing
- Accessibility testing
- Performance testing
- Security testing
- AI model validation
- Promote Test Driven Development (TDD), Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), Specification by Example and Shift-Left testing practices.
- Design quality engineering solutions supporting feature teams, platform teams and product squads.
3. AI-Led Quality Engineering
- Lead adoption of AI-assisted and Agentic Testing capabilities.
- Define enterprise standards for AI-generated test design, test automation generation, self-healing automation and intelligent defect analysis.
- Drive effective use of GitHub Copilot, Claude and future AI engineering assistants.
- Establish approaches for ML model validation, prompt testing, AI workflow assurance and responsible AI testing.
- Identify opportunities to improve QE productivity through AI-driven risk analysis and predictive quality insights.
4. Technology & Platform Quality Architecture
Own quality engineering strategy and architecture across:
Digital CX Platforms
- OutSystems
Business Applications
- Microsoft Dynamics 365
- Microsoft Power Platform
Data & Analytics Platforms
- GCP-based solutions
- SQL platforms
- AI product ecosystems
- Power BI
Integration Platforms
- Azure APIM
- Event-driven integrations
AI & Intelligent Products
- Underwriting Intelligence solutions
- ML-powered products
- Email Intake and Fraud/Coverage Assessment platforms
5. Engineering Excellence & Governance
- Define enterprise quality KPIs and engineering metrics.
- Establish quality governance processes supporting risk-based decision making.
- Define release readiness standards and quality gates.
- Provide independent assurance for high-risk and business-critical initiatives.
- Lead defect prevention strategies using root cause analysis and quality trend insights.
- Standardise reporting using Power BI, Allure, Azure DevOps dashboards.
- Ensure regulatory, audit and operational risk requirements are appropriately addressed.
6. Capability Building & Technical Leadership
- Act as the senior technical authority for Quality Engineering across the Tech Transformation portfolio.
- Coach and mentor QE Leads, SDETs, Automation Engineers and programme test teams.
- Develop engineering communities, standards and knowledge-sharing practices.
- Drive adoption of modern testing approaches across Product, Engineering and Delivery teams.
- Build internal capability and reduce dependency on external suppliers through coaching and framework reuse.
- Promote consistent engineering practices across all delivery teams.
Required Technical Expertise
Programming Languages
Deep hands-on expertise in:
- TypeScript, JavaScript, C#
- Python, PyTest, SQL
Strong understanding of:
- Object-oriented programming
- API development and testing
- Data engineering concepts
- Cloud-native architectures
- Microservices architectures
Automation & Testing Tools
UI Automation
- Playwright, BrowserStack, Applitools
- Cucumber/Reqnroll
API Automation
- RestAssured, Postman, Newman, RESTSharp
Email Services
- mailinator
Data Testing
- PyTest, SQL Validation, Databricks Notebooks, Prefect
Performance & NFR
- JMeter, k6, Accessibility Testing (JAWS), Security Testing (OWASP ZAP)
Delivery & DevOps
- Azure DevOps
- Azure Repos, Pipelines
- Jira, Xray
Reporting & Observability
- Power BI, Allure
AI Engineering
- GitHub Copilot
- Claude
- Agentic AI Testing Solutions
