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Senior Test Engineer - Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency

Government Digital & Data -

Full-time (Permanent)
£44,241 - £58,997 (Digital & Data allowance up to £14,756)
Published on
20 April 2026
Deadline
10 May 2026

Location

Swansea

About the job

Job summary

Would you like to work with cutting edge of cloud-first technologies?

Do you have experience with modern software development lifecycles in product delivery and test?

Have you deep technical breath, supported by a good knowledge of the functional requirements and activities?

If so, we’d love to hear from you!

At the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), we take testing very seriously. We have Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs) and Test Engineers embedded in our delivery squads and specialists in our Performance and Independent testing teams.

As a Senior Test Engineer, you will be a critical part of our team, overseeing and coordinating the independent testing activities across multiple simultaneous deliveries. You will be actively involved with suppliers, partners, and our engineers in ensuring testing activities are performed and reported.

You will have an excellent understanding of modern testing and development approaches. We follow an agile methodology, targeting cloud-first deployments. You will often need open communication with several delivery squads and a pragmatic approach to problem solving is essential.

A significant part of this role will be working on deliveries designed to transform our IT estate but is likely to also include deliveries necessitated by legislation on the legacy estate.

You will report to the Test Manager and represent the capability internally and externally.

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

  • Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
  • 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays and a privilege day for the King’s birthday
  • Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below!

Find out more about what it's like working at: Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - Department for Transport Careers

Job description

In this role you will be part of the Quality Engineering team responsible for continually driving all aspects of quality improvements. You will be working across several of our delivery teams and performance teams.

Your responsibilities will include, but aren’t limited to:

  1. Select, use and guide others in using the most appropriate technical tooling, engineering approaches, test types and techniques to identify and address risks early
  2. Extend, standardise and build reusable frameworks and tools that support testing
  3. Communicate and document chosen approaches, tools, techniques and outcomes to the team and appropriate stakeholders
  4. Contribute to and agree engineering standards

Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills they need. We aim to empower line managers to create teams where people can flourish and deliver excellent outcomes for the public.

For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

Person specification

Required experience:

  • You will be an expert at evaluating the testing needs for services with a web-based UI and API interfaces. You will be able to converse about products hosted on public cloud infrastructure and specifications in the Gherkin syntax.
  • You will be an expert at functional testing and test analysis, having a deep technical breath, supported by a good knowledge of the non-functional requirements and activities. You will have an understanding of modern software development lifecycles and the role of CI / CD in product delivery and test.
  • You will have a proven track record of delivering QA efficiency through the promotion of tools and an automation-first approach. You will have a high attention to detail and not be afraid to challenge when needed.

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