Lead Test Engineer / Principal SDET

GTC Recruitment
Birmingham, United Kingdom
8 days ago

Role details

Contract type
Temporary contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Working hours
Regular working hours
Languages
English
Experience level
Senior
Compensation
£ 166K

Job location

Birmingham, United Kingdom

Tech stack

Java
API
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Automation of Tests
DevOps
Distributed Systems
Github
MongoDB
NoSQL
Prometheus
Selenium
Strategies of Testing
Performance Testing
Spring Cloud
Grafana
Spring-boot
Gatling
Gitlab
Playwright
Kafka
REST
Splunk
Api Management
Docker
SDET
Jenkins
Microservices

Job description

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

Requirements

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.

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