Senior Test Engineer - Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency - SEO

Location

Bristol, Swansea, Leeds, Nottingham, Newcastle, Oldham, Birmingham or Yeading

About the job

Job summary

The Strategy, Policy, Digital & Technology Directorate plays a central role in delivering DVSA’s digital services that support road safety and compliance across the UK. The Test Engineering team sits within this directorate and is responsible for ensuring high-quality, reliable, and scalable digital products. Working closely with product, delivery, and engineering teams, the group embeds quality from the outset of development, balancing manual and automated testing to provide confidence in delivery. The team drives improvements in testing practices, builds reusable frameworks, and promotes a culture of collaboration, early engagement, and continuous improvement to meet both user needs and DVSA’s strategic goals.

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 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 Standards Agency - Department for Transport Careers

Job description

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

• Leading the planning, execution, and reporting of testing activities using appropriate test tools and frameworks.
• Applying and optimising existing test tools, frameworks, and reusable assets to improve test efficiency and coverage.
• Embedding quality from the start by defining acceptance criteria and promoting early engagement in testing activities.
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams to align testing priorities with user needs, business value, and product risk.
• Providing expert guidance on defect management, test analysis, and continuous improvement of testing practices.
• Driving consistency in testing approaches, standards, and ways of working across delivery teams.
• Using data insights and defect trends to recommend changes that improve quality outcomes and reduce escaped defects.
• Mentoring and coaching colleagues to strengthen testing capability, confidence, and shared ownership of quality.

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.

Open Sessions: Would you like to find out more about the role, the team and what it’s like to work in our department? If so, we are organising an open session where you can virtually 'meet the team' on the 5th March 2026 – invite link here

Person specification

To be successful in this role you will need to have the following experience:

• Testing large-scale digital systems across both legacy and cloud-based environments.
• Using established test tools and frameworks to support effective testing.
• Experience testing frontend, API, and data layers, including performance, usability, and accessibility considerations.
• Analysing test results and outcomes to inform risk-based quality and delivery decisions.
• Working effectively within Agile teams and contributing to cross-team improvements in quality and testing practices.
• Using CI/CD pipelines and containerised environments to support modern testing approaches.
• Defining clear acceptance criteria and embedding quality early in the delivery lifecycle.
• Mentoring and coaching colleagues to improve testing practices, confidence in results, and shared ownership of quality.
• Communicating complex technical and quality-related information clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.