Head of Testing

You'll lead and develop a high-performing Quality Engineering function, working in close partnership with Engineering Managers, Team Leads, and Product stakeholders. You'll coach and inspire Automation Engineers and QA specialists, fostering a culture of ownership and continuous improvement, while ensuring teams are equipped with the right tools and capabilities. You'll also drive adoption of AI-assisted testing approaches and provide oversight of third-party partners, acting as a strong advocate for quality across the organisation.

Your Impact

You'll be accountable for ensuring all software released within People First meets the highest standards of quality, reliability, and performance. You'll deliver an automation-led testing strategy, embed continuous testing within CI/CD, and leverage AI to improve coverage, efficiency, and early risk detection. Alongside this, you'll establish clear quality metrics and governance, ensure robust non-functional testing, and drive predictable, high-quality delivery in partnership with Engineering and Product. Ultimately, you'll ensure People First remains scalable, resilient, and trusted by customers, while enabling teams to move faster with confidence.

Do you have experience in Test automation?, * Proven experience leading testing / quality engineering functions at scale, ideally in SaaS or product-led environments

• Strong background in modern automated testing strategies and tools
• Experience embedding quality into Agile / DevOps environments and CI/CD pipelines
• Deep understanding of quality engineering for complex distributed systems
• Experience with Microsoft Azure environments and cloud-native architectures
• Demonstrated ability to lead, coach, and grow high-performing teams
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills
• Experience driving continuous improvement, standards, and engineering maturity
• Exposure to AI-driven development or testing practices

Pulled from the full job description

• Referral programme
• Employee discount
• Sick pay
• Private medical insurance, Alongside the opportunity to work with an incredible team and express your individuality, we offer a range of personalised benefits including:
• Access to over 60 internal training courses, professional qualifications, and cross-departmental mentoring and coaching programs
• 24/7 access to a GP through Help at Hand for you and your family, confidential mental health support, and paid sick leave
• Ability to purchase or sell additional holiday days beyond 25 days and bank holidays
• Enhanced Family leave
• My MHRewards offering discounts at over 900 retailers
• Monthly employee recognition program and departmental awards
• Referral bonus scheme of up to £2,000
• Employee-led social events such as running clubs, football teams, book clubs, and bake-offs
• On-site subsidised restaurants offering a variety of fresh meals daily
• Opt-in benefits schemes such as private medical insurance and dental coverage

We value the well-being, financial stability, and inclusivity of our employees, and strive to provide a supportive working environment.

At MHR, we're completely committed to creating a supportive and inclusive workplace where all voices are heard, and everyone feels valued and supported.

Whatever your background, abilities and experiences, if you're excited by this role we want to hear from you. If you require assistance for an interview, please let us know and we'll make sure your needs are met when you arrive.

If we receive an exceptionally high volume of applications, we reserve the right to close this vacancy earlier than originally advertised.

Pay: From £80,000.00 per year

At MHR, our employees are central to our success and play a key role in helping customers achieve sustainable high performance. With a team of over 900 professionals, we work to make things flow smoothly, whether it's for large organisations or individual employees. As businesses face rapid changes in the world of work, our team is here to help them adapt and thrive. By focusing on the core needs of efficiency, productivity, growth, and impact, our employees use their expertise to deliver real solutions through our People and Finance platform. This system, which covers finance, HR, payroll, and learning, helps businesses run more smoothly and make better decisions in real time. With over 40 years of experience behind us, MHR's track record as a high-performance organisation is built on clear goals, a shared vision, and strong communication - all of which we pass on to our customers. MHR is more than just a place to work; it's a platform for empowerment. Joining us means bringing innovation, technology, and teamwork seamlessly removes obstacles, enhances your skills, and allow you to focus on what's most important to you- work that matters. With us, you'll grow, find your flow, and make a lasting difference in your career, your team, and your impact. Your Career This is a senior leadership opportunity to define and deliver the quality engineering vision for one of MHR's most critical platforms. You'll own the end-to-end testing strategy across People First, embedding automation-first and AI-enabled practices throughout the SDLC. Working closely with Engineering, Product, and Architecture, you'll ensure quality is built in, not tested in, while shaping the use of tooling, CI/CD, observability, and metrics to drive continuous improvement and delivery predictability. You'll have the autonomy and influence to establish a best-in-class quality engineering function within a modern SaaS environment.