Lead QA Engineer - 1 Year FTC (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds and London)

This is a senior, hands-on Lead QA role, responsible for strategy, frameworks, and raising QA standards across multiple squads.

As a true Lead QA Engineer at Genomics England with deep Java expertise, you’ll own the technical direction of quality across the organisation, tackling complex testing challenges and driving best practice at scale. You’ll shape how we approach testing, define standards, and act as a hands-on authority in modern QA. This role is about influence and expertise rather than people management, combining strategic thinking with strong technical delivery.

You’ll confidently and expertly design, build, and evolve automation test frameworks, act as a trusted authority across tribes, and mentor engineers/teams to raise skills and standards. Working closely with engineering leadership and product squads, you’ll take ownership of ensuring our systems are resilient, performant, and secure.

A hands-on Lead QA role where your technical expertise sets the standard and you stay close to the code and tooling. You’ll shape QA strategy, mentor teams, work confidently with senior engineering leadership, and drive quality across the organisation, delivering impact and quality at scale.

Everyday responsibilities include:

• Act as a cross-tribe source of expertise in automation, performance, resilience, and security testing

• Design, build, and maintain robust test frameworks with a strong emphasis on both Java and Playwright

• Guide squads in embedding automated, performance, and security testing into CI/CD pipelines

• Mentor QA engineers and developers, raising skills and confidence across teams

• Produce clear, practical documentation and “golden paths” that help squads adopt best practice

• Confidently lead initiatives to improve test tooling, documentation, and knowledge sharing

• Collaborate with wider engineering leadership and other senior level stakeholders to embed test practices into CI/CD pipelines and shift testing left

• Define, track, and properly report on testing effectiveness metrics

• Stay current with new tools and techniques, bringing fresh thinking into our QA strategy

Essential skills and experience:

• Strong hands-on programming with both Java and Playwright

• Demonstrable experience designing and maintaining automation frameworks (e.g. Selenium WebDriver, JUnit, TestNG, REST-assured)

• Proven track record in performance testing (e.g. JMeter, Locust)

• Confident with security testing tools (e.g. OWASP Zap, Snyk)

• Experience embedding QA into CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitLab, Jenkins)

• Proven experience designing and implementing scalable test automation strategies and frameworks across multiple projects

• AWS/cloud-based testing experience (Terraform, containers, serverless, monitoring)

• Experience mentoring, coaching, and leading on QA strategy

Nice to have:

• Modern UI testing tools (e.g. Cypress, Browserstack, Robot Framework)

• Contract or mock API testing (e.g. PACT, WireMock)

• Accessibility testing tools (e.g. Axe-core)

• Knowledge of data privacy, compliance, and auditability in testing

• Familiarity with bioinformatics, scientific, or healthcare data is a strong plus

If you’re a proven and highly experienced Lead QA Engineer, still very much hands-on and motivated by setting standards, leading QA strategy, and solving complex QA challenges to have tangible impact across critical systems, this is your chance to lead from the front!