Test Automation Lead

Overview

Our client is a major enterprise organisation committed to safety as a core value, where working safely is a fundamental condition of employment. Operating within complex environments, the business drives excellence across business-as-usual, projects, and vendor ecosystems. They foster a collaborative culture that values rigorous quality assurance, continuous improvement, and robust operational readiness.

About the Role

We are looking for a hands-on technical Test Automation Lead to define and refine the enterprise test automation strategy and translate it into a prioritised implementation roadmap. This role lifts risk-based automated coverage, reduces manual regression effort, and establishes reliable automation across BAU, projects, and vendors.

You will own the automation operating model, principles, guardrails, standards, governance, and best practices aligned with enterprise QA frameworks and release governance requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy & Operating Model: Define, refine, and implement the enterprise automation strategy, operating model, standards, and governance across BAU, projects, and vendors.
• Roadmap & Backlog Management: Maintain a prioritised implementation and coverage roadmap based on business risk, application criticality, and delivery demand, demonstrating progress through completed automation increments.
• CI/CD Integration: Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines with risk-appropriate execution triggers, establish reliable regression release gates, and manage failed runs and exceptions.
• Framework Evolution: Design, maintain, and scale automation frameworks and reusable assets (including Tosca and Playwright estates), review code, monitor framework stability, and manage technical debt.
• Regression Triage: Triage the regression estate into automate, retain-manual, or retire, reducing flaky tests and improving execution times.
• Comprehensive Automation: Design and maintain UI, API, back-end, integration, and end-to-end tests across complex enterprise workflows (including authentication, authorisation, and error handling).
• Environment & Data Coordination: Coordinate environment readiness, test data management, and service virtualisation for repeatable automated execution alongside cyber security and environment owners.
• Leadership & Mentoring: Lead and mentor automation engineers across teams through hands-on delivery, code reviews, technical guidance, and shift-left testing practices.
• Defect Analysis & Quality Assurance: Analyse defects and test failures, close risk-based coverage gaps, and assure the quality and coverage of automation delivered by vendors and system integrators.
• Reporting & Governance: Report coverage, pass rates, execution times, flakiness, and manual effort displaced to stakeholders, supplying evidence for business-case development and benefits tracking.

What You'll Bring

• Minimum of 8 years' experience in test automation, including at least 3 years in senior or lead roles.
• Proven experience defining enterprise automation strategy and implementing prioritised roadmaps, operating models, standards, and governance through sustained delivery.
• Strong programming and scripting proficiency in relevant languages such as JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, or Python, with the ability to review code and guide engineers.
• Demonstrated architecture, design, and maintenance of scalable automation frameworks, reusable components, and maintainable test assets.
• Hands-on API, integration, and end-to-end automation experience across complex, multi-vendor enterprise systems.
• Familiarity with API automation frameworks such as Postman, REST Assured, Karate, Playwright API, or similar.
• Strong CI/CD and DevOps experience integrating reliable automated tests and release gates into delivery pipelines.
• Ability to coordinate automation priorities across BAU, projects, CI pods, and vendors while assuring partner quality.
• Proven leadership and mentoring capabilities across multiple teams, with strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills