Lead Automation Test Engineer

Contract Lead Automation Test Engineer – Financial Services

Location: Sheffield (Hybrid – 3 days on-site)

Duration: 12-month initial contract

IR35 Status: Inside IR35

We are recruiting for an experienced Lead Automation Test Engineer to join a major financial services client in Sheffield. This role will lead automation strategy, test delivery, and quality engineering across a high-profile programme. You will provide technical leadership to the test engineering team, define best practices, and drive high-quality automated solutions across complex cloud and on-prem environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor automation engineers, providing technical guidance, coaching, and oversight of automation activities.
• Develop, execute, and maintain automated test frameworks and scripts for web, API, database, and cloud-based applications.
• Create comprehensive test plans, test cases, test scenarios, test data, and associated documentation based on requirements and specifications.
• Select and recommend appropriate automation tools based on system architecture and project requirements.
• Define performance test strategies, covering scope, environments, risks, and resource planning.
• Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines (GitLab/Jenkins) and support shift-left testing practices.
• Lead and coordinate SIT/OAT/UAT testing activities with technical and business stakeholders.
• Analyse design documents for testability and ensure requirements traceability across test assets.
• Accurately log, track, and report defects, attend triage sessions, and verify fixes.
• Provide continuous improvement recommendations across test processes, tooling, and automation capability.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and adapt automation approaches to evolving project needs.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Strong background in automation testing within financial services or complex enterprise environments.
• Proven experience developing automated test scripts with JavaScript .
• Hands-on experience with automation tools such as Selenium WebDriver IO (WDIO), Cucumber, Selenium UI , and RestAssured for API testing.
• Strong manual testing experience alongside automation capability.
• Experience with cloud testing across AWS, Azure, GCP or similar platforms.
• Skilled in Jenkins pipeline creation , CI/CD integration, and automated reporting.
• Web UI testing and database comparison testing expertise.
• Experience with JIRA , Xephyr , and broader test management tools.
• API Testing, API Gateway testing, Batch/ETL testing.
• Experience with GitOps repositories and modern DevOps workflows.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and communication skills, with the ability to lead and influence.
• Experience working in Agile and Waterfall delivery environments.

Desirable Experience

• Exposure to Identity & Access Management (IAM) programmes.
• Experience with SailPoint IdentityIQ , identity warehousing, SCIM, REST API, LDAP, OIDC, CSV ingestion.
• Testing experience with Graph Database Management Systems (GDBMS) .
• Experience with ServiceNow , Active Directory, AWS/Azure integrations.
• Testing “functions and decision points as code,” such as Policy-as-Code.
• Pub/Sub and MQ systems testing.
• GCP cloud testing methodologies.
• SaaS platform testing.
• Process improvement leadership – establishing performance testing standards and governance.
• Skill sets across languages such as: Java, Cypher, Python, JavaScript, PHP, .NET, Go , SQL Server, MySQL.
• Experience with test tools such as QMetry , TestRail , Postman , Insomnia .
• BDD/TDD experience.