Lead Test Automation Engineer

We are looking for a hands-on Lead Test Automation Engineer to take ownership of Inspiretec's automation, integration and performance testing capability.

We have established a foundation in UI automation using Playwright, alongside early-stage API automation investment. This role will lead the next stage of maturity: improving coverage, increasing reliability, reducing manual testing effort, and embedding automation as a standard part of how we deliver software.

A key strategic priority for Inspiretec is to increase delivery cadence without increasing risk. This role will be central to achieving that - enabling more frequent releases through robust automation, repeatable integration testing approaches, and performance testing that reflects real-world demand.

This is a leadership role with genuine influence. You will set standards, drive adoption across teams, and grow a sustainable quality engineering capability through a combination of hiring, mentoring and upskilling., Strategy & Ownership

• Own and evolve Inspiretec's automation and performance testing strategy
• Increase automation coverage across both new feature development and regression suites
• Reduce manual testing effort across delivery teams
• Embed automation within the development lifecycle (Definition of Done, PR validation, CI/CD quality gates)
• Establish a clear strategy for testing complex third-party integrations
• Implement approaches where full test environments may not exist (mocking, stubbing, service virtualisation)
• Define and implement a reliable, scalable test data management strategy
• Align quality metrics with deployment frequency, defect escape rates and manual effort reduction, * Design, build and maintain scalable automation frameworks (Playwright and supporting tooling)
• Deliver automated testing across:

• Functional UI
• API and microservices
• Integration
• End-to-End
• Regression

• Mature API automation using frameworks such as Karate or equivalent
• Lead performance and load testing initiatives (e.g. JMeter or similar)
• Design realistic load models reflecting peak booking and high-traffic scenarios
• Improve reliability, reduce test flakiness and enhance reporting, * Establish and promote best practices, standards and reusable assets across teams
• Mentor engineers and provide hands-on coaching in automation and quality engineering
• Support recruitment of automation specialists where required
• Identify opportunities to retrain and upskill existing employees in automation practices
• Drive adoption of automation across delivery teams and ensure it is sustained over time
• Promote quality as a shared engineering responsibility across engineering and product

Do you have experience in Virtualization?, * Strong hands-on automation engineering experience in complex, distributed systems

• Proven experience building and scaling automation frameworks (beyond scripting)
• Strong experience with modern UI automation tooling (e.g. Playwright, Cypress or similar)
• Strong API test automation experience (Karate or equivalent frameworks)
• Strong programming skills aligned to a .NET-first environment:

• C# (.NET) and/or TypeScript/JavaScript

• Proven performance/load testing experience (JMeter, LoadRunner or similar)
• Experience designing integration testing strategies for systems with external dependencies
• Experience implementing effective test data management approaches
• Experience embedding automation into CI/CD pipelines
• Experience mentoring engineers and influencing engineering standards, * Experience with service virtualisation or API mocking tools
• Experience working in integration-heavy enterprise platforms
• Security testing exposure
• Consultancy or multi-stakeholder delivery experience
• Experience applying AI tools within software engineering workflows

• A high-impact leadership role with genuine influence and autonomy
• The opportunity to shape quality engineering across an enterprise platform
• Complex, integration-heavy systems where automation and strategy truly matter
• Hybrid working from Cardiff or fully remote within the UK
• Competitive salary and benefits
• A collaborative, forward-thinking engineering culture

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Inspiretec delivers enterprise-scale travel technology platforms serving some of the largest leisure travel operators in the UK. Our end-to-end solutions - spanning reservations, CRM and digital customer engagement - support high transaction volumes, complex integrations and business-critical journeys, particularly during peak booking periods. Our platform operates in a highly connected ecosystem, integrating with multiple third-party systems, suppliers and data sources. Reliability, performance and release confidence are critical to the businesses we support. As we continue to scale, we are strengthening Quality Engineering as a core discipline to enable faster, safer and more predictable delivery across our enterprise platform.