Senior Software Engineer (Test)
3 days ago
Manchester
Senior Software Engineer in Test Contract | Inside IR35 | £400 per dayLocation: Manchester (Hybrid - 2-3 days onsite per week)Contract End Date:March 2027 I'm currently working with a large, well-established enterprise client who are continuing to grow their digital engineering capability in Manchester. They are looking to engage an experienced Senior Software Engineer in Test on a long-term contract to support the delivery of high-quality, scalable, cloud-based digital platforms. This is an excellent opportunity for a senior-level test professional to join a collaborative, agile environment where quality, automation, and engineering best practice are taken seriously. The role offers strong delivery stability with a contract running until March 2027. The Role You'll join a multi-disciplinary digital engineering team, working closely with developers, SREs, and other engineers to embed quality throughout the software delivery lifecycle. The focus is on automation-led testing, CI/CD integration, and driving a continuous testing culture. You will also play a role in mentoring and supporting more junior engineers in test. Key Responsibilities • Define and deliver automated testing strategies for cloud-native systems, platforms, and APIs, • Design, implement, and maintain test automation frameworks, • Embed test stages and quality gates within CI/CD pipelines, • Support defect investigation, root-cause analysis, and resolution, • Collaborate with engineering and SRE teams to meet defined SLAs and SLOs, • Define testing, release, and quality assurance processes, • Set and track quality metrics and measurable outcomes, • Promote continuous testing and quality-first engineering practices, • Provide mentoring and coaching to junior engineers in testRequired Experience, • 5+ years' experience in automated software testing within agile and DevOps environments, • Strong understanding of the Software Testing Lifecycle (STLC), • Hands-on experience with tools such as Selenium, Cypress, Robot Framework, or Postman, • Strong programming capability in Java, Python, or another OO language, • Experience testing enterprise-scale, cloud-native applications, • Good knowledge of APIs, microservices, and distributed architectures, • Experience with version control systems (Git) and modern CI/CD pipelines, • Confident communicator with a collaborative mindsetNice to Have, • BDD experience and Gherkin syntax, • Exposure to observability and monitoring tools (Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, Datadog), • Experience with Kubernetes or cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), • Experience with relational or NoSQL databasesWorking Pattern & Rate, • £400 per day (Inside IR35, via umbrella), • Hybrid working: 2-3 days per week onsite in central Manchester