Senior Software Development Engineer in Test

Holland & Barrett
Charing Cross, United Kingdom
2 days ago

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Working hours
Regular working hours
Languages
English
Experience level
Senior

Job location

Charing Cross, United Kingdom

Tech stack

Java
JavaScript
Artificial Intelligence
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Automation of Tests
Unit Testing
Continuous Integration
DevOps
JUnit
Reliability Engineering
Prometheus
Software Engineering
Systems Integration
TypeScript
Datadog
React
Grafana
Browserstack
Spring-boot
Cypress
Kotlin
Gitlab-ci
Integration Tests
Kubernetes
Playwright
React Native
Front End Software Development
SDET
Jenkins
Microservices

Job description

We're at an exciting moment in our engineering journey. As we modernise our platforms and ways of working, we're also re-introducing what "good" looks like for quality at Holland & Barrett. We're moving from traditional testing approaches towards a modern, engineering-led quality strategy: unit testing, contract testing, component testing, integration testing, E2E flows, synthetics, and strong observability across our microservices.

We're looking for a Senior SDET who is hands-on, highly technical, and passionate about setting teams up for long-term success. In this role, you'll build the frameworks, tools, and practices that empower engineers to write and maintain their own tests - with you acting as the subject-matter expert, coach, and quality advocate who helps them get there.

This is a high-impact role within our eCommerce Engineering organisation (web and mobile). You'll collaborate closely with engineers, designers and product teams to embed a test-first mindset and raise the bar for reliability, delivery confidence, and customer experience.

What you'll do

  • Design, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks that are easy for engineers to use and extend.

  • Partner with teams to introduce modern microservices testing approaches across unit, contract, component, integration and E2E layers.

  • Lead the shift towards engineers owning their tests by providing guidance, examples, and hands-on pairing to help teams adopt best practices confidently.

  • Collaborate with Engineering and DevOps to evolve CI/CD pipelines and embed automation earlier in the lifecycle.

  • Improve observability around testing and reliability, integrating logs, traces, metrics, synthetics, and alerts to increase confidence in releases.

  • Promote good testing principles and high-quality engineering practices across teams; become a trusted voice for quality.

  • Act as a consultant-style partner to squads, helping them design testable systems and adopt pragmatic approaches to automation.

Requirements

Do you have experience in Unit testing?, * Strong software engineering background in any language.

  • Proven experience building automation frameworks from scratch.

  • Solid understanding of microservice testing approaches: unit, contract, component, integration, and E2E.

  • Experience with tools such as Playwright, Cypress, JUnit, WireMock, or similar.

  • Strong CI/CD knowledge (GitLab CI, Jenkins, etc.) and familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code and cloud-native environments (containers, Kubernetes).

  • Understanding of observability (Grafana, Datadog, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, etc.) and how it supports quality and testing.

  • Ability to explain technical concepts clearly to different audiences.

  • A collaborative style, with experience driving culture change or elevating quality practices across multiple squads.

Nice to have:

  • Experience writing in JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin or Go.

  • Experience with React Native test automation.

  • Experience testing AI/ML systems.

  • Exposure to building internal developer platforms or quality-focused tooling.

  • Experience in software engineering, SRE, DevOps, or developer experience teams.

Our tech stack:

  • Languages: JavaScript/TypeScript, Java/Kotlin Spring boot, Go

  • Frontend: React, React Native

  • Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, GitLab CI/CD

  • Testing: Playwright, BrowserStack

  • Architecture: Microservices

Benefits & conditions

  • Health Cash Plan
  • Life Assurance
  • Bonus Scheme - Based on company & personal performance
  • Virtual GP
  • Private Medical care
  • FREE at-home blood test kit
  • Holiday Purchase option
  • Pension Contribution scheme
  • Access to 'Wellhub' with gyms, studios and wellbeing apps

Discounts & Savings

  • 25% Colleague Discount with FREE Standard Delivery
  • Exclusive Discounts from a wide range of partners
  • £/€50 Annual Product Allowance to spend in store

Learning & Development

  • Access to a variety of learning opportunities, including Level 2-5 Apprenticeships, Workshops and our Digital Learning Library
  • AND MORE!

Holland and Barrett is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome diverse perspectives and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all colleagues. We understand that when our colleagues are listened to, respected and valued for who they are, we build an organisation with belonging at its heart - making health and wellness a way of life for everyone.

Holland & Barrett does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Please do not forward resumes to our job alias, employees, or any other company location. Holland & Barrett is not and will not be responsible for any fees if a candidate submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless otherwise agreed with respect to specific open position(s). Division: Technology City: London Country: UK Job Type: Full Time Number of Hours: 37.5 Contract Type: Permanent

About the company

Holland & Barrett International strives to be the world's leading health and wellness business. Currently the largest in Europe and growing in other markets, the health and wellness of our colleagues and customers is at our heart. Technology at H&B We're on a mission to make health and wellness a way of life for everyone - and technology is at the heart of our future to become a leading omni-channel retailer. We're building some great products, and we're investing in the rapidly advancing technology that is helping our customers meet their health and wellness goals. We're delivering more speed in the retail experience, greater convenience in service and delivery, and increasing personalisation in our brand and product propositions, both in-store and online. Collaborative, working at pace and always with a strong customer focus in everything we do. We love the cloud, we prefer building the right solutions over buying generic ones, and we embrace automation and testing in all things software, infrastructure, and data.

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