Lead QA Engineer - 12 Month FTC (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds and London)

Overview

Lead QA Engineer - 12 Month FTC (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds and London)

Are you a highly proven QA leader with deep Java expertise, confident in your ability to set direction and raise the bar in automation, performance, and security testing?

As a Lead QA Engineer at Genomics England, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping how we test, tackling complex quality challenges, and driving best practice across the organisation. We’re looking for someone with demonstrable experience at the highest level - someone who can combine technical depth with leadership, guiding squads and influencing strategy.

You’ll confidently design and evolve test frameworks, act as a trusted source of expertise across tribes, and mentor engineers to raise skills and standards. Working closely with engineering leadership and product squads, you’ll take the lead in ensuring our systems are resilient, performant, and secure at scale.

Responsibilities

• Act as a cross-tribe source of expertise in automation, performance, resilience, and security testing
• Design, build, and maintain robust test frameworks with a strong emphasis on Java and Playwright
• Guide squads in embedding automated, performance, and security testing into CI/CD pipelines
• Mentor QA engineers and developers, raising skills and confidence across teams
• Produce clear, practical documentation and 'golden paths' that help squads adopt best practice
• Lead initiatives to improve test tooling, documentation, and knowledge sharing
• Collaborate with engineering leadership to embed test practices into CI/CD pipelines and shift testing left
• Define, track, and report on testing effectiveness metrics
• Stay current with new tools and techniques, bringing fresh thinking into our QA strategy

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on programming with Java and Playwright
• Demonstrable experience designing and maintaining automation frameworks (e.g. Selenium WebDriver, JUnit, TestNG, REST-assured)
• Proven track record in performance testing (e.g. JMeter, Locust)
• Confident with security testing tools (e.g. OWASP Zap, Snyk)
• Experience embedding QA into CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitLab, Jenkins)
• Proven experience designing and implementing scalable test automation strategies and frameworks across multiple projects
• AWS/cloud-based testing experience (Terraform, containers, serverless, monitoring)
• Experience mentoring, coaching, and leading on QA strategy

Nice to have

• Modern UI testing tools (e.g. Cypress, Browserstack, Robot Framework)
• Contract or mock API testing (e.g. PACT, WireMock)
• Accessibility testing tools (e.g. Axe-core)
• Knowledge of data privacy, compliance, and auditability in testing
• Familiarity with bioinformatics, scientific, or healthcare data is a strong plus

Qualifications details

Only relevant work experience at this level - no particular qualifications are required

Salary & Closing

Salary From: £58,500

Closing Date: Monday 15th September at 23:00 (UK time)

Benefits

• Generous Leave: 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, additional leave for long service, and the option to apply for up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
• Family-Friendly: Blended working arrangements, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits.
• Pension & Financial: Defined contribution pension (Genomics England double-matches up to 10%, however you can contribute more if you wish), Life Assurance (3x salary), and a Give As You Earn scheme.
• Learning & Development: Individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, and reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
• Recognition & Rewards: Employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
• Health & Wellbeing: Subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace account, and access to an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu jabs.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Genomics England is actively committed to providing and supporting an inclusive environment that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion best practice both within our community and in any other area where we have influence. We are proud of our diverse community where everyone can come to work and feel welcomed and treated with respect regardless of any disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, or social background.

Genomics England’s policies of non-discrimination and equity and will be applied fairly to all people, regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, being pregnant or recently becoming a parent, race, religion or beliefs, sex or sexual orientation, length of service, whether full or part-time or employed under a permanent or a fixed-term contract or any other relevant factor.

Genomics England does not tolerate any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying at work. Such behaviour is contrary to our values.

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