Lead Test Engineer / Principal SDET
Posted Today by GTC Recruitment
£74 Per hour
Inside
Hybrid
Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
Summary: The Lead Test Engineer / Principal SDET will support a significant digital transformation program within a government environment, focusing on developing and implementing a scalable, automation-first test strategy. This hands-on leadership role requires both strategic influence and active participation in automation frameworks and engineering practices. The position is hybrid, requiring presence in various locations including Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Newcastle. SC Clearance is necessary for this role.
Key Responsibilities:
- Define and implement an end-to-end test strategy aligned to microservices architecture
- Establish testing standards, patterns, and best practices across multiple teams
- Assess existing testing approaches and drive continuous improvement
- Embed scalable testing frameworks and reusable solutions across engineering teams
- Design, build, and maintain robust automated test frameworks
- Deliver testing across all levels: unit, integration, contract, system, and end-to-end
- Lead automation efforts within Java-based environments
- Actively contribute to code and framework development, not just governance
- Work closely with engineering teams and stakeholders to ensure alignment on quality
- Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and coaching to engineers and testers
- Promote consistent application of testing practices across delivery teams
- Maintain visibility of quality metrics and delivery outcomes
Key Skills:
- Strong experience defining and implementing test strategies in microservices environments
- Hands-on automation experience using: Java, Selenium, Rest Assured
- Strong experience in API, integration, and contract testing
- Experience working across both monolithic and distributed systems
- Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines
- Spring Boot-based applications
- Kafka or similar event-driven messaging systems
- Experience with contract testing (e.g. Pact, Spring Cloud Contract)
- Strong API testing and service-level testing experience
- Awareness of non-functional testing (performance, accessibility)
- Experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB
- Ability to build scalable, maintainable, reusable automation frameworks
- Ability to influence across teams without direct authority
- Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Proven ability to drive engineering quality in complex environments
Salary (Rate): £74.00/hr
City: Birmingham
Country: United Kingdom
Working Arrangements: hybrid
IR35 Status: inside IR35
Seniority Level: Senior
Industry: IT
Inside IR35 £640/day max (Umbrella, dependent on experience) 12-month contract SC Clearance required Locations: Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle (60% hybrid) (No London-based candidates)
Overview
We are seeking an experienced Lead Test Engineer / Principal SDET to support a major digital transformation programme within a large government environment. You will play a key role in shaping and embedding a scalable, automation-first test strategy across multiple engineering teams, supporting the transition from monolithic systems to a modern microservices-based architecture . This is a hands-on technical leadership role , combining strategic influence with active contribution to automation frameworks and engineering practices.
Key Responsibilities
- Test Strategy & Leadership
- Define and implement an end-to-end test strategy aligned to microservices architecture
- Establish testing standards, patterns, and best practices across multiple teams
- Assess existing testing approaches and drive continuous improvement
- Embed scalable testing frameworks and reusable solutions across engineering teams
- Hands-on Engineering
- Design, build, and maintain robust automated test frameworks
- Deliver testing across all levels: unit, integration, contract, system, and end-to-end
- Lead automation efforts within Java-based environments
- Actively contribute to code and framework development, not just governance
- Collaboration & Governance
- Work closely with engineering teams and stakeholders to ensure alignment on quality
- Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and coaching to engineers and testers
- Promote consistent application of testing practices across delivery teams
- Maintain visibility of quality metrics and delivery outcomes
Essential Skills & Experience
Technical Expertise
- Strong experience defining and implementing test strategies in microservices environments
- Hands-on automation experience using: Java, Selenium, Rest Assured
- Strong experience in API, integration, and contract testing
- Experience working across both monolithic and distributed systems
- Solid understanding of: CI/CD pipelines
- Spring Boot-based applications
- Kafka or similar event-driven messaging systems
Modern Testing Practices
- Experience with contract testing (e.g. Pact, Spring Cloud Contract)
- Strong API testing and service-level testing experience
- Awareness of non-functional testing (performance, accessibility)
- Experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB
- Ability to build scalable, maintainable, reusable automation frameworks
Leadership
- Experience operating at Lead or Principal SDET level
- Ability to influence across teams without direct authority
- Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Proven ability to drive engineering quality in complex environments
Desirable Skills
- AWS experience
- Playwright / Serenity BDD
- Performance testing tools (Gatling, K6)
- Observability tools (Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk)
- Docker and modern DevOps practices
Tools & Technologies
- AWS
- Java, Selenium, Rest Assured
- Serenity BDD / Playwright
- Pactflow / Spring Cloud Contract
- Kafka
- MongoDB
- Jenkins / GitHub / GitLab
- Docker
- Gatling / K6
- Grafana / Prometheus / Splunk
About You
You are a hands-on technical leader who can define direction while actively contributing to delivery. You thrive in complex, multi-team environments and are passionate about building scalable, reliable, automation-first testing solutions. You are equally comfortable writing automation code as you are shaping strategy and influencing senior stakeholders.