Senior Test Engineer - DWP - G7

Location

These roles may be located in one of the following locations; Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sheffield.

Please note that for candidates requesting to work in Newcastle, this role will be based at Benton Park View from September 2025, and then at 1 Pilgrim Place in Newcastle city centre by the end of 2027.

Please find further information on the Corporate hub locations here.

About the job

Job summary

We’re looking for outstanding Senior Test Engineers, who want to contribute to demanding and exciting digital services for the UK Government. Be part of changing the face of public services with the potential to dramatically transform the future of millions of people.

These roles represents a unique opportunity to join the Identity and Trust team at DWP Digital. We’re looking for someone who would like to be part of a team delivering real value to people across the UK.

As a senior test engineer, you’ll lead by example, establishing best practices across multiple agile squads. You’ll be experienced in influencing other team members or stakeholders and enjoy coaching or managing other engineers.

You’ll be hands on shifting testing to the left across our teams. Against a modern microservice-based architecture written in JavaScript/TypeScript and Java, you’ll write balanced, reliable, automated test suites, integrate them into CI pipelines and lead others to do the same.

The Identity Trust Team at DWP are developing multiple micro service-based systems to support citizens in their interactions with DWP.

We’re utilising cloud-based services, TDD principles and a CI/CD approach to provide scalable, resilient systems that deliver the best value for money for our citizens.

You’ll be working to ensure the quality and reliability of those systems.

Job description

As a Senior Test Engineer, you will:

• Design and develop scalable, reliable automated test solutions for interrelated micro-services leveraging Object-oriented programming (OOP) principles. 
• Pair program, mentor junior engineers, promote best testing practices, and guide others in learning programming languages and methodologies such as Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD). 
• Oversee multiple test engineers, providing technical leadership and guidance on the delivery of testing activities, ensuring that quality, time and cost objectives are met, acting as an escalation point for issues. 
• Drive collaboration across teams and disciplines, working with others to produce test approaches based upon risks, impacts, dependencies, priorities, and areas of responsibility. 
• Support the development of Test Engineering team, via performance assessments, reviews of test practices, coaching and mentoring. 

Person specification

When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below:

• (Lead Criterion): Extensive experience of designing, building and improving comprehensive, robust and reliable automated testing solutions against complex microservice based architectures.
• Experience leading testing across multiple teams in the lifecycle from understanding business needs to delivery into production. Including technical leadership, test generation, reporting, defect management, and continuous improvement.
• Depth of experience and demonstrable capability in a modern programming language, ideally Java or JavaScript/TypeScript, and automated testing practices and proven ability to learn more.
• Extensive experience of testing in cloud-based environments. Experience of containerisation, orchestration would be beneficial.
• Experience of working closely with Software Developers and DevOps engineers to lead the setup and adoption of continuous integration, delivery and deployment practices to shift Quality left.
• Experience of conducting and enabling non-functional testing such as Performance, Security and Accessibility – including test types, test tools, and standards.

 An initial sift may be conducted using the lead criteria 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.