Lead Test Engineer
We're looking for a Lead Test Engineer for our public sector client with locations across Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle on an initial 12-month contract, paying up to £640 per day (Inside IR35).
This role requires 60% office attendance per week.
The successful Lead Test Engineer will be a hands-on technical leader with a genuine automation-first mindset, comfortable both setting direction and rolling up their sleeves to deliver. A key part of this role is actively supporting and driving a large-scale transformation from monolithic systems to distributed microservices architecture, so direct experience of this journey in a Java environment is essential, not just familiarity with microservices in isolation.
You will need proven experience working with the following:
- Hands-on experience driving or supporting transformation from monolithic to distributed microservices architectures, specifically in Java
- Designing and implementing end-to-end test strategies for microservices environments
- Test automation using Java, Selenium and Rest Assured across unit, integration, contract, system and end-to-end test levels
- API testing, contract testing and asynchronous messaging including Kafka CI/CD pipelines and Spring Boot-based application environments
- Contract testing tools such as Pactflow or Spring Cloud Contract
- Performance testing using tools such as Gatling or K6
- Cloud environments, specifically AWS
- Non-relational databases including MongoDB
- Operating at Lead or Principal level, influencing stakeholders and coaching engineers across multiple teams
Experience with Serenity BDD, Playwright, Docker, GitHub, GitLab, Jenkins and observability tools such as Grafana, Prometheus or Splunk would be highly desirable.
You will need to hold or be able to pass SC clearance for this role.
Interested? Please apply below.
Lead Test Engineer, Principal SDET, Test Automation, Java, Selenium, Rest Assured, API Testing, Contract Testing, Pactflow, Kafka, Microservices, Monolith to Microservices, Architecture Transformation, CI/CD, AWS, Serenity BDD, Playwright, Performance Testing, Gatling, K6, MongoDB, Public Sector, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, SC Clearance