Lead Test Engineer

Information Technology Working pattern Full-time, Compressed hours Number of jobs available 1 Contents

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Location Croydon, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow. About the job Job summary

We are looking for people who are passionate about Quality. Do you want to be part of the award-winning Home Office Quality Assurance and Testing Team (QAT) within Digital, Data and Technology?

Quality is at the heart of everything we do. We provide a large-scale shared service, delivered through 750 QA professionals. It supports services that are essential for the UK!

A strong continuous improvement culture underpins the way we work, making advancements on how quality is delivered and assured in ground breaking DevOps environments, including cloud platforms. We are a well-established, well-knit team of quality specialists and among the best in the industry!

These roles sit in the His Majesty?s Passport Office (HMPO), Police and Public Protection Technology (PPPT) and Migration and Borders Technology Portfolio (MBTP) business areas.

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. Where this is the case, employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in the office . Applicants can raise any queries to the email address at the bottom of the advert.

Watch this short video to hear from members of Home Office Digital talking about the projects they work on and their experience of working here: Working for Home Office Digital., Our Lead Test Engineers are held in high regard, well sought after, and highly valued members of the teams they work in.

We are seeking individuals with the skills required to solve engineering challenges of QAT approaches and build strong collaborator relationships. Working alongside impactful multi-disciplinary teams, you will use your technical, delivery and leadership skills to drive outstanding, industry standard quality engineering practices. Your success will be linked to the success of the teams you work with, and you will play a pivotal role in helping your team deliver outcomes, safely and securely.

In return, we will invest in your learning and development, and you will be supported by guides in your job family, while having opportunities to mentor and be mentored. You will be a member of the test engineering practice. We invest in adopting innovative technology. We are actively developing quality strategies to assure AI based solutions, as well as its safe usage in quality engineering. Our test engineering practice will be a core part of these strategies.

Quality Engineering Tools and Technologies we use:

We have a wide portfolio of projects, and our vast estate covers a whole range of tools. The below is sample snapshot of some tools we use:

• Frameworks: Serenity BDD (Selenium + RestAssured), Playwright, and several bespoke frameworks.
• DevOps: AWS, Azure, Jenkins, Drone, Concourse, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform.
• Performance testing ? Locust, JMeter.
• Other tools: Browserstack, Axe, ZAP, SonarQube.
• Observability and Monitoring: ELK, Grafana, Dynatrace.

Person specification

Your main day to day responsibilities will be:

• Ownership of existing test frameworks and actively reviewing them, identifying need for new frameworks, and delivering these at scale.
• Leading and coaching a team of test engineers and helping solve technical challenges that the team may require assistance with, evaluating efficacy of test engineering processes across projects and suggesting improvements. Promoting convergence, creating shared capabilities and data driven approaches within test engineering.
• Embracing innovation - evaluating tools and recommending approaches that can benefit testing. For instance, ones used for virtualisation, data mocking, contract testing or other automated integration testing techniques, and determining tools and approaches for automated test data management, test results aggregation and release management. Enabling precise, real-time reports of automation test runs and also roll-up reports.
• Managing test infrastructure usage and determining approach to running distributed, parallel tests. Using container and cloud technology to orchestrate faster, scalable tests while optimising costs.
• Working with teams to promote use of code scan, code quality, accessibility testing and observability tools.
• Participating in the QAT Test Engineering community as well as QAT recruitment to help grow it.

Working Pattern

Due to the business requirements of this role, it is only available on a full-time basis. However, compressed hours are available., * A 30-minute technical exercise that will assess the candidate?s proficiency in using industry standard test engineering tools.

• This will be followed by a 60-minute panel interview assessing your Technical Skills (SFIA Framework) and Behaviours using technical and behaviour-based questions.

The technical exercise will involve live coding using Java, during which you will be expected to create/refactor one UI and one API automation test each using a test framework. This will also involve questions on how you can improve the given framework.

We will send you a link to the framework and further information 5 working days before the interview. This is so that you familiarise yourself with the framework we will be using. You are not expected to make any code submissions.

If you are invited to an interview, you will be required to bring a range of documentation for the purposes of establishing identity and to aid any pre-employment checks. Please see the attached list of Home Office acceptable ID documents.

Sift and Interview dates

The sift will commence from 15/04/ 2026.

Interviews are expected to take place from 29/04/2026. (Subject to the Panel?s operational requirements/priorities).

Interviews will be conducted remotely via MS Teams.

We will try to meet the dates set out in the advert. There may be occasions when these dates will change. You will be provided with sufficient notice of the confirmed dates., The allowance values are set by the Home Office, subject to remaining in a qualifying role. This allowance is non-contractual, subject to an annual review and could be withdrawn at any time.

For both new entrants and existing civil servants, the total compensation offer is a combination of base salary and, if applicable, a capability-based allowance. The pay ranges for this role are National: £62,109 - £68,320 and London: £66,229 - £72,852. New entrants to the Civil Service will start on the pay range minimum. For existing civil servants, our policies on level transfer and promotion will apply.

Working at the Home Office

Every day, Home Office civil servants do brilliant work to develop and deliver policies and services that affect the lives of people across the country and beyond. To do this effectively and fairly, the Home Office is committed to representing modern Britain in all its diversity, and creating a welcoming, inclusive workplace where all our people can bring their whole selves to work and perform at their best.

We are flexible, skilled, professional and diverse. We work to recruit and retain disabled staff and area Disability Confident Leader. We are proud to be one of the most ethnically diverse departments in the civil service. We are a Social Mobility Foundation top 75 employer.

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant's details held on the IFD will be refused employment.

For further information please see the attached notes for candidates which must be read before making an application.

Existing Civil Servants should note that some of the Home Office terms and conditions of employment have changed. It is the candidate?s responsibility to ensure they are aware of the Terms and Conditions they will adopt should they be successful in application and should refer to the notes for candidates for further details.

Transfer Terms: Voluntary.

You will need to meet the nationality requirements for this role and obtain the necessary security clearance to take it up.

Any move to the Home Office from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk.

Reasonable Adjustments

If a person with disabilities is at a substantial disadvantage compared to a non-disabled person, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should:

• Contact Government Recruitment Service via as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
• Complete the ?Assistance Required? section in the ?Additional Requirements? page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you are deaf, a language service professional.

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the ?Contact point for applicants? section.

Feedback Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment. Security Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check .

See our vetting charter . People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks. Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

As a Lead Test Engineer, you will have experience of:

• Programming using Java to write secure, reusable, and maintainable automated tests and test utilities. You should be able to use concepts like thread management, synchronisation, resource, and memory management to increase the efficiency of test engineering solutions and be able to use scripting languages like Bash or PowerShell (Lead essential criteria).
• Using and implementing tools like Selenium, RestAssured, Serenity BDD (or similar) , build tools like Maven or Gradle, code management tools like git.
• Using and implementing unit test frameworks like JUnit, assertion libraries, data serialisation tools, security best practices like OWASP Top 10 and standards such as WCAG to design automated accessibility tests.
• Extensively using CI/CD tools for pipeline automation and a solid understanding of release pipeline concepts. Familiarity with containerization platforms like Docker and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
• Using and implementing POM test design pattern and SOLID code design principle. Implementing coding guidelines and standards with a solid understanding of protocols and architectural styles involved in implementing tests.
• Ability to actively engage with performance testing engineers and work alongside them to identify performance bottlenecks. Ability to read, interpret and articulate performance reports.

SFIA capability framework

Skills for the Information Age (SFIA) version 8 is the technical framework that sets the standard capability and development of all levels in the Home Office. This is a link to the capability framework: All skills A - Z English (sfia-online.org).

We use set SFIA technical skills to form our interview questions and we will assess you against these technical skills during the selection process.

The essential skills listed above are reflective of the Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession Career Framework (based on the industry standard SFIA framework). Use the SFIA Levels of responsibility to understand what would be expected for each technical skills listed below.

• Strategic Planning (ITSP) ? Level 4
• Domain Experience ? Level 4
• Test, Analysis, Design and Execution ? Level 3
• Automation and Tooling ? Level 4
• Performance Testing ? Level 4
• Integration and Assurance ? Level 3

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Making Effective Decisions

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Strategic Planning (ITSP) ? Level 4
• Domain Experience ? Level 4
• Test, Analysis, Design and Execution ? Level 3
• Automation and Tooling ? Level 4
• Performance Testing ? Level 4
• Integration and Assurance ? Level 3, For meaningful security checks to be carried out, individuals need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time. Learn more on our website. Security Checks - Home Office Careers.

Please note that this role requires Security Check (SC) clearance, which would normally need 5 years? UK residency in the past 5 years.

However, in exceptional circumstances security clearance applications for candidates who have been present in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years may be considered. Failure to meet this residency requirement will result in your security clearance application being rejected., We are unable to sponsor any individuals via Skilled Worker Sponsorship / Tier 2 (General) work visas as we do not hold a UK Visa & Immigration (UKVI) Skilled Worker License.

Benefits Alongside your salary of £62,109, Home Office contributes £17,992 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Why work for us...

Find out more information at: Benefits - Home Office Careers, but some of the primary ones are:

• A Civil Service Pension with employer contribution rates of at least 28.97%.
• In-year reward scheme for one-off or sustained exceptional personal or team achievements.
• 25 days annual leave on appointment, rising with service.
• 8 days of public holidays, plus 1 additional privilege day.
• Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office.