Lead QA Automation Engineer

Holborn and Covent Garden
1 week ago
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Lead QA Automation Engineer
Location: Hybrid (UK based, 2 days per week in the office)
Salary: £70,000
Reporting to: Head of Technology
Direct reports: 1 Senior Automation Engineer

The Opportunity
A high-traffic digital platform is modernising its technology and delivery approach, with a strong focus on automation, faster releases, and engineering excellence.
Quality is central to this journey. The business is investing in an automation-first QA function to ensure releases are stable, scalable, and user-focused.
They are now looking for a Lead QA Automation Engineer to own quality strategy, tooling, and delivery across multiple product streams.

The Role
This is a senior, hands-on role combining QA leadership with technical delivery. The Lead QA Automation Engineer will work closely with Engineering, Product, and Delivery to embed quality throughout the product lifecycle, while remaining actively involved in automation and exploratory testing.

Key Responsibilities

QA Strategy and Leadership
Define and deliver an automation-first QA strategy
Champion quality across planning, sprints, and releases
Establish and track QA metrics and release confidence
Partner with Engineering, Product, and Delivery leadership
Automation and Testing

Build and maintain Playwright automation using TypeScript
Carry out exploratory and manual testing on complex features
Support issue triage and root cause analysis
Balance leadership with hands-on contribution
Framework Ownership

Own and improve QA tooling, frameworks, and CI pipelines
Drive best practices for test structure and maintainability
Lead integrations for performance, security, and visual testing
Leadership and Mentorship

Line manage and mentor a Senior Automation Engineer
Promote strong collaboration across QA, engineering, and product
Experience and Skills

Experience as a Lead QA Engineer, Senior QA Engineer, or QA Manager
Strong hands-on automation experience, ideally Playwright (TypeScript)
Solid knowledge of CI/CD, test reporting, and analytics
Confident communicator with a strong problem-solving mindset
Nice to Have

Experience with high-traffic consumer or marketplace platforms
Exposure to performance, security, or visual regression testing
Why Apply

High impact, senior QA role
Strong balance of strategy and hands-on work
Modern engineering environment
Hybrid working and long-term growth opportunity

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