Senior Test Engineer - DWP - G7

We’re looking for outstanding Senior Test Engineers to design, build and maintain our flagship service, Universal Credit and our Working Age Benefits.

Universal Credit is one of the highest profile digital transformation programmes in the world, praised for its fast and flexible response to the Covid-19 pandemic and now in use by over 5 million claimants and 30,000 staff. 

As a Senior Test Engineer, you will be part of a multi-functional agile delivery team and be an integral part of shaping and delivering automated test solutions that enable Universal Credit Working Age Benefits to deliver quality services consistently that meet the needs of our agents and claimants. The successful candidate will be expected to lead engineers as well as collaborate with others, actively seek input from colleagues and value a multidisciplinary team over hierarchy. 

This role represents a unique opportunity to join the Universal Credit and Working Age team at DWP Digital, to be part of a team delivering real value to people that need help during the difficult times of their lives.  

Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. For further information, please see 'Selection process details'.

Job description

As a Senior Test Engineer you will help define and implement the strategy for building automation test solutions that help to assure the quality of products that make up DWPs digital services.  You will also:

• Lead Test Engineers across several teams, providing technical leadership and guidance.
• Drive collaboration across engineers of different roles both within your team and the wider teams to solve problems and enable consistent solutions and strategies.
• Build automation test solutions that help to assure the quality of our products, contribute towards their design, and look for way to improve the value automation adds.
• Ensure that usability, accessibility, security, stability, and capacity are embedded in the development of services.
• Drive teams to take a risk based, context driven approach to agile testing assessing and understanding the risks to drive decisions.
• Lead the adoptions of Continuous Integration/Delivery pipelines to run a full range of tests against our products and assure our builds.
• Lead the traceability of testing, risks, defects, and report progress to appropriate stakeholders across several teams.
• Be willing to challenge assumptions and current processes to help us improve. Reusing and evolving our strategies and tooling.
• Drive the identification of tooling and solutions to aid constant improvements, ensuring we build the right product in the right way.
• Proactively share knowledge, solutions and support our internal communities along with mentoring, coaching, and supporting your peers.
• Contribute to discussions around the latest technology trends, tools and best practices within Testing.

Person specification

When giving details in your CV you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below:

• Lead criterion: Experience of working in a complex, multidisciplinary environment, leading testing activities and engaging with multiple stakeholders.
• Experience in modern programming language preferably JAVA or JavaScript and aptitude to learn.
• Experience in building and maintaining API automation testing preferably Rest Assured or similar tools.
• Experience in building and maintaining UI automation testing preferably Selenium / Cypress or similar tools.
• Adaptable team player who can influence others and has experience of shift left principles including CI/CD tools such as GitLab, Jenkins or similar tools.
• Experience of conducting and enabling non-functional testing such as Performance (preferably k6, gatling, JMeter or similar tools), Security, Compatibility and Accessibility.
• Experience working in agile environment and defect management tools like JIRA or similar.

*An initial sift will be conducted using the lead criterion stated above. Candidates who pass the initial sift will progress to a full sift. 

If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact richard.hanley@dwp.gov.uk