Senior Software Engineer (Test)

Contract | Inside IR35 | £400 per day Location: Manchester (Hybrid - 2-3 days onsite per week)Contract End Date: March 2027

I'm currently working with a large, well-established enterprise client who are continuing to grow their digital engineering capability in Manchester. They are looking to engage an experienced Senior Software Engineer in Test on a long-term contract to support the delivery of high-quality, scalable, cloud-based digital platforms.

This is an excellent opportunity for a senior-level test professional to join a collaborative, agile environment where quality, automation, and engineering best practice are taken seriously. The role offers strong delivery stability with a contract running until March 2027.

You'll join a multi-disciplinary digital engineering team, working closely with developers, SREs, and other engineers to embed quality throughout the software delivery lifecycle. The focus is on automation-led testing, CI/CD integration, and driving a continuous testing culture.

You will also play a role in mentoring and supporting more junior engineers in test.

• Define and deliver automated testing strategies for cloud-native systems, platforms, and APIs
• Design, implement, and maintain test automation frameworks
• Embed test stages and quality gates within CI/CD pipelines
• Support defect investigation, root-cause analysis, and resolution
• Collaborate with engineering and SRE teams to meet defined SLAs and SLOs
• Define testing, release, and quality assurance processes
• Set and track quality metrics and measurable outcomes
• Promote continuous testing and quality-first engineering practices
• Provide mentoring and coaching to junior engineers in test

• 5+ years' experience in automated software testing within agile and DevOps environments
• Strong understanding of the Software Testing Lifecycle (STLC)
• Hands-on experience with tools such as Selenium, Cypress, Robot Framework, or Postman
• Strong programming capability in Java, Python, or another OO language
• Experience testing enterprise-scale, cloud-native applications
• Good knowledge of APIs, microservices, and distributed architectures
• Experience with version control systems (Git) and modern CI/CD pipelines
• Confident communicator with a collaborative mindset

• BDD experience and Gherkin syntax
• Exposure to observability and monitoring tools (Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, Datadog)
• Experience with Kubernetes or cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Experience with relational or NoSQL databases

• £400 per day (Inside IR35, via umbrella)
• Hybrid working: 2-3 days per week onsite in central Manchester
• Long-term contract running through to March 2027

If this sounds like a role you'd like to discuss, or if you'd like further details on the client, project, or interview process, please get in touch.