Senior QA Engineer

Who you are

• Multi-Team Influence: A track record of mentoring and upskilling multiple engineering teams to improve quality practices at scale
• Root Cause Mindset: Capacity for addressing testing and process problems at their source, stepping back to understand the broader context and applying creative solutions
• Solid Technical Foundations: Practical experience with TDD, BDD, CI/CD pipelines, and the Testing Pyramid
• Observability & Reliability Knowledge: Hands-on experience with modern observability tools to track real-world system behaviour and validate SLIs/SLOs
• Distributed Infrastructure Expertise: Experience testing distributed architecture, with a focus on security and scalability
• Clear Communication: Excellent ability to advocate for quality engineering principles with technical and non-technical stakeholders alike (PMs, Developers, Designers)
• A proactive, curious, and collaborative approach to working in a remote-first, asynchronous global team
• Experience building self-serve testing frameworks across multiple squads
• Hands-on experience with API and performance testing tools (e.g. K6, Locust, Gatling)
• Exposure to our tech stack:
• Languages: Python (or similar)
• Observability: Datadog (or similar)
• Infra & Tooling: Terraform, Git-based CI/CD workflows

What the job involves

• Our Global Platform Engineering Reliability group architect, builds, and maintains the resilient, scalable platforms powering Kraken’s products
• As we expand globally, we’re looking for a hands-on Quality Engineer (QE) to help shape and scale our quality strategy across multiple engineering teams
• You’ll act as the bridge between Product, Engineering, and Delivery—making sure quality is built into both our tech stack and our day-to-day processes
• This is a hands-on role where you’ll improve test automation while empowering Teams to take end-to-end ownership of quality, from early design through to production
• Drive Multi-Team Strategy: Balance hands-on test automation with setting practical quality standards across multiple product and platform squads
• Enable Teams: Coach and mentor engineering teams on best practices, building self-serve testing capabilities so quality is a shared responsibility
• Embed Shift-Left & Shift-Right: Catch issues early in the delivery lifecycle (Shift-Left) while using Observability to monitor real-world product health in production (Shift-Right)
• Apply the Testing Pyramid: Partner directly with Teams to implement balanced testing strategies across unit, integration, and end-to-end layers
• Focus on Non-Functional Requirements: Help teams define and execute testing strategies for security, resilience, and performance
• Improve product Observability: Take a hands-on approach to strengthening test coverage and tying test outcomes directly into Product Observability (metrics, logs, traces)
• Shape Process & Culture: Take an active part in agile ceremonies, driving continuous improvement and sharing knowledge across teams

Benefits

• Equity option scheme: Everyone who works at Kraken owns a part of the business with shares in the Octopus Energy Group. So as the company grows we all benefit
• Pension scheme: We'll pay 5%. You decide on your contribution starting from 3%
• Holidays: We don't count your holiday days. We trust everyone to work hard and take as much time off as they need
• Flexible working: We're happy for you to work in a way that's best for you. Need to pick the kids up from school or work from home? That's not a problem. It's important to us that everyone has a positive work-life balance
• Free breakfast: Our offices are always stocked with fresh fruit, breakfast, snacks, great coffee and soft drinks.

Weekly on a Friday we all get together (including virtually) for company updates and drinks

• For parents: We can arrange access to tax free childcare, as well as maternity and paternity pay
• Free eye tests: We offer eye test vouchers for all colleagues who use Visual Display Units (VDU). Long spells of VDU work can be visually demanding so we want to make sure you're OK
• Car salary sacrifice: Save money on leasing an electric vehicle through our workplace salary sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to work scheme: Spread the cost of buying a bike, including accessories and safety equipment, up to a value of £2.5K. And save money on the repayments through the cycle to work scheme
• Get the right tech: Have a certain tech requirement? We’ll do our best to sort it for you
• Money coach: Get support with financial planning through our partnership with Octopus Money Coach
• Yoga + Headspace: Twice a week we have 45 Minute live yoga class open to all Kraken staff.

Need some calm in your life? We have Headspace licences available

• Team events and activities: Participate in team events and cohesion activities to build stronger connections
• Health Insurance: We’ll provide comprehensive coverage with Alan and access to Alan Mind.
• Transportation: If you cycle to the office we’ll support you by up to €600/year, if you use public transport we'll reimburse 75% of your Navigo pass. If you use both, we'll support you by up to €900/year
• Green energy discount: Enjoy a 32% discount on green energy compared to the regulated tariff
• Year-end gift voucher: Receive a €100 gift voucher at the end of each year
• Gymlib subscription: Get a subscription to Gymlib for access to a wide variety of fitness options
• Meal vouchers: Enjoy €10 Ticket Restaurant cards for meal expenses
• NGO support days: Benefit from three additional RTT days (Reduction of Working Time) to support NGO work, every year