Senior Test Engineer

Details
Reference number

433692

Salary

£44,720 - £48,720

New entrants to the Civil Service will start their role on the salary band minimum:

National roles : £44,720

London roles : £48,720

You may be eligible for an additional non-pensionable allowance, pending a Capability and Skills Assessment, with a value of up to £12,680.

New entrants to the Civil Service will start their role on the pay range minimum.

A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

GBP

Job grade

Senior Executive Officer

Contract type

Permanent

Business area

HO - Digital Data and Technology - Quality Assurance and Testing

Type of role

Digital

Information Technology

Quality

Working pattern

Flexible working, Full-time, Part-time, Compressed hours

Number of jobs available

16

Contents

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Location

2 Ruskin Square, Croydon CR0 2WF, Soapworks, Manchester M5 3LZ, Vulcan House, Sheffield S3 8NU, Warehouse K London E16 1DR, Glasgow HMPO Northgate G4 0BT.

About the job
Job summary

The Quality Assurance industry is at a critical juncture as part of the Digital age and the next wave of disruptive technological advances, and we are looking for people who are passionate about Quality Assurance and Testing to join our community led team embedded across all the Home Office's business areas.

The Quality Assurance and Test (QAT) function in the Home Office is one of the largest in the industry, involving circa 850+ specialists. We use new technology, platforms and ways of working to help development teams meet user needs and make the delivery of services even better. Joining our team will mean you are well positioned to help shape the future, providing a balanced and data-driven approach to Quality Assurance to best support the effective delivery of Home Office goals.

Job description

As a Senior Test Engineer, you will adopt an engineering approach to achieving quality. You will be involved in assuring, measuring, and building quality into every phase of the software development life cycle. In doing so, you will seek to implement product level Test Engineering approaches which are in line with the portfolio Test engineering approach and QAT Test Engineering principles.

You will be involved in solving engineering challenges of QAT approaches adopted in projects that you work with. This involves developing and running scalable tests and processes that are faster, frequent, and continuous. You will be expected to build relationships with Software engineering, DevOps, Product and Project delivery partners to help make sure QAT is embedded by default into the development approach.

You will seek guidance and support from other members of the Test Engineering community to help develop your own technical and delivery management skills.

You'll lead the test engineering strategy for your product area, embedding quality throughout the software development lifecycle. You'll define and implement test approaches that align with portfolio-wide standards and Quality Assurance and Testing (QAT) principles.

You'll be responsible for ensuring quality is built in from the start—measuring, assuring, and continuously improving it at every stage. You'll stay current with emerging tools and techniques, evaluating their potential to enhance delivery outcomes.

This role also involves mentoring others and actively contributing to the QAT Test Engineering community. You'll champion the value of quality assurance across the wider GDaD profession, helping to shape a culture of excellence.

Quality Engineering Tools and Technologies we use:

We have a wide portfolio of projects, and our vast estate covers a whole range of tools. The below is sample snapshot of some tools we use:

• Frameworks: Serenity BDD (Selenium + RestAssured), and several bespoke frameworks.
• DevOps: AWS, Jenkins, Drone, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform.
• Performance testing: JMeter.
• Other tools: Browserstack, Axe, ZAP, SonarQube.
• Observability and Monitoring: ELK, Grafana, Dynatrace.

Your tasks and responsibilities will include (but not limited to):

Your main day to day responsibilities will be:

• Actively maintain existing test frameworks or help develop new ones when required. You will also undertake code refactoring where necessary.
• Develop tests that are predictable, repeatable and implement automated verification of acceptance criteria to the greatest possible extent. Review test automation code and test utility code, and configure, monitor, and trigger tests to run on demand as well as continuously evaluating the efficacy of this process.
• Determine tools and approaches for virtualisation, data mocking , contract testing or other automated integration testing techniques and determine tools and approaches for automated test data management, test results aggregation and release management. Enable precise, real-time reports of automation test runs.
• Manage test infrastructure usage and determine approach to running distributed, parallel tests. Use container & Cloud technology to orchestrate faster, scalable tests.
• Interpret data from code scan, code quality and observability tools. Agree quality thresholds and provide actionable feedback in aiding quality improvement.
• Participate in the QAT Test Engineering community to help grow it.

Watch this video to hear from members of the team talking about the projects they work on and their experience of working here.

Person specification

Essential skills

You'll have a demonstrable passion for Test Engineering, with the following skills or some experience in:

• Programming using Java to write secure, reusable, and maintainable automated tests and test utilities. You should be familiar with concepts like thread management, synchronisation, resource, and memory management, and scripting languages like bash or PowerShell (Lead essential criteria). Using tools like Selenium for front-end automation, RestAssured for API testing, Serenity BDD, build tools like Maven or Gradle and using Git to manage branches and merge requests through distributed version control.
• Working with unit test frameworks like Junit, assertion libraries and data serialisation tools, leveraging tools like Wiremock, to aid automated testing.
• Working with POM test design pattern and SOLID code design principle. Implementing coding guidelines and standards and using BDD tools like Cucumber for developing automated tests.
• Using CI/CD tools while having a good understanding of release pipelines and jobs and familiarity with containerization platforms like Docker.
• Using code quality tools like SonarQube.

Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession Career Framework

The technical skills listed below are reflective of the Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession Career Framework. Please refer to the attached Home Office QAT Skills Library pack, which includes detailed descriptors of the listed skills at each level of capability to assist with your application.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Strategic Planning (ITSP) – Level 3
• Domain Experience – Level 3
• Test, Analysis, Design and Execution – Level 3
• Automation and Tooling – Level 3
• Performance Testing – Level 3
• Integration and Assurance – Level 3

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,720, Home Office contributes £12,955 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Why work for us...

• A highly competitive pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• 25 days annual leave on appointment rising 1 day per year up to 30 days, plus 8 days public holidays and 1 day for the King's Birthday.
• Flexible working options to enable you to achieve the work life balance that is right for you including; Full time, part-time, flexi time, compressed hours and job sharing.
• A hybrid working model of a minimum 60% of your contracted hours in the workplace and 40% remote.
• Training and development opportunities tailored to your role, including access to technical and professional accreditations.
• Access to funded qualifications (subject to approval)
• A capability allowance reviewed annually.
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.
• Enhanced parental leave schemes.
• Annual performance-based bonus and recognition awards.

This link is to a short guide to employee benefits: Benefits - Home Office Careers

Why join our QAT Community in the Home Office?

The QAT Testing Team won the best Team of the Year at the 2024 European Software Testing Awards This prestigious win reflects our dedication to excellence and innovation in Quality Assurance and Testing.

This is a huge opportunity to be a part of our growth journey and build your capability and expertise.

Quality Assurance and Testing (QAT) is an important part of the Home Office mission. Everyone is responsible for quality, and we have a team of skilled people who make sure quality is delivered in the most effective way. This means getting fast feedback, understanding how a service performs, and helping the development team to make more informed decisions. We value automating as much of the test effort as possible allowing our team of specialists and domain experts to undertake better evaluations.

You can see more here Quality, Assurance and Testing - Home Office Careers

There is a link to how it feels to work in QAT on our GOV.UK site here: Day in the life of a QAT'er

Things you need to know
Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete a CV and up to 1000 word personal statement.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Please note your CV and personal statement should include all relevant experience that relates to our essential skills criteria listed in the advert and role description. Use STAR format in your examples.

Remove information that identifies you (for example your name, age or place of education) so that you will be judged on merit alone and not your personal background, circumstances, race or gender.

(Do NOT include e-mail addresses or links to online profiles, resumés, or prior work, either personal or business. Active links or e-mail addresses will result in your application being rejected)

Please ensure that all examples provided in your application are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words. All applications are screened for plagiarism, copying, and generating of examples/ answers from internet sources including Artificial Intelligence. If detected, the application may be withdrawn from the process.

Further action, including disciplinary action, may be considered in such cases involving civil servants. Providing false or misleading information would be contrary to the core values of honesty and integrity expected of all civil servants.

Stage 1: Application Sift

The sift will be held on the CV and Personal Statement. Please read the Essential skills for this position carefully. We will only consider those who meet the listed requirements.

In the event of a high number of applications received, an initial sift may be held on the lead essential criteria - "programming using Java to write secure, reusable, and maintainable automated tests and test utilities. You should be familiar with concepts like thread management, synchronisation, resource, and memory management, and scripting languages like bash or PowerShell", in your personal statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift will be progressed to a full sift.

Stage 2: Interview

If you're successful at stage 1, you will be invited to an interview.

This will consist of two parts:

• A 30-minute technical exercise that will assess the candidate's proficiency in using industry standard test engineering tools.
• This will be followed by a 60-minute panel interview.

The technical exercise will involve live coding using Java, during which you will be expected to create/refactor one API automation test using a test framework. This will also involve questions on how you can improve the given framework. You will also be expected to write a test case (in plain text) for testing Infrastructure as Code in AWS.

We will send you a link to the framework and further information 3 working days before the interview. This is so that you familiarise yourself with the framework we will be using. You are not expected to make any code submissions.

The interview will explore your technical skills, experience, and behaviours relevant to the role.

Sift and interview dates

Sift will be conducted week commencing 12th November 2025.

Interviews will be held from 20th November Subject to the Panel's operational requirements/priorities)

Interviews will be conducted remotely via MS Teams.

We will try to meet the dates set out in the advert. There may be occasions when these dates will change. You will be provided with sufficient notice of the confirmed dates.

Further Information

We value diversity and inclusion and welcome applications from the widest diversity of backgrounds, cultures, and experiences. We particularly encourage applications from women, people with disabilities and LGBT+ as they are currently under-represented in the Home Office at this grade level. Appointments will be made on merit on the basis of fair and open competition.

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. Where this is the case, employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in the office. Applicants can raise any queries to the email address at the bottom of the advert.

Please read the Essential skills for this position carefully. We will only consider those who meet the listed requirement. If you have previously made an unsuccessful application for a role with the same essential skills and are not able to demonstrate how you have developed these skills since your last application, please reconsider applying as your application is unlikely to be successful.

Reserve list

A reserve list of successful candidates will be kept for 12 months. Should another role become available within that period you may be offered this position.

UK residency and security requirements

You need to have lived in the UK for the past 5 years. This is because this post requires the successful candidate to have Security Check (SC) clearance and individuals need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. These checks will only take place after the job offer has been accepted.

Visa Sponsorship

We are unable to sponsor any individuals via Skilled Worker Sponsorship / Tier 2 (General) work visas as we do not hold a UK Visa & Immigration (UKVI) Skilled Worker License.

Capability Allowance

The advertised role is part of the Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession. This role has access to a Digital Capability-Based Allowance. Applicants who are successful at interview will be invited to complete a Capability and Skills Assessment post-interview. Any allowance awarded will be based on the assessment of your capability against the six skills advertised for this role. Please see the attached candidate pack for more information.

The allowance values are set by the Home Office, subject to remaining in a qualifying role, and are non-pensionable. This allowance is non-contractual, subject to an annual review and could be withdrawn at any time.

For both new entrants and existing civil servants, the total compensation offer is a combination of base salary and, if applicable, a capability-based allowance. New entrants to the Civil Service will start on the pay range minimum. For existing civil servants, our policies on level transfer and promotion will apply.

Job offers to this post are made on the basis of merit. We often have similar roles available at different grades. If a candidate is suitable for a similar role or a lower grade than they have applied for, we may offer the candidate that role without the need to go through a further selection process providing the role has the same competencies and essential skills.

Working at the Home Office

Every day, Home Office civil servants do brilliant work to develop and deliver policies and services that affect the lives of people across the country and beyond. To do this effectively and fairly, the Home Office is committed to representing modern Britain in all its diversity, and creating a welcoming, inclusive workplace where all our people are able to bring their whole selves to work and perform at their best.

We are flexible, skilled, professional and diverse. We work to recruit and retain disabled staff and area Disability Confident Leader. We are proud to be one of the most ethnically diverse departments in the civil service. We are a Social Mobility Foundation top 75 employer.

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant's details held on the IFD will be refused employment.

For further information please see the attached notes for candidates which must be read before making an application.

Existing Civil Servants should note that some of the Home Office terms and conditions of employment have changed. It is the candidate's responsibility to ensure they are aware of the Terms and Conditions they will adopt should they be successful in application and should refer to the notes for candidates for further details.

Transfer Terms: Voluntary.

If you are invited to an interview you will be required to bring a range of documentation for the purposes of establishing identity and to aid any pre-employment checks. Please see the attached list of Home Office acceptable ID documents.

Any move to the Home Office from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at

You will need to meet the nationality requirements for this role and obtain the necessary security clearance to take it up.

For meaningful security checks to be carried out, individuals need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time. Learn more on our website. Security Checks - Home Office Careers

In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service /Disclosure Scotland on your behalf. However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct.

If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre- stating the job reference number in the subject heading.

For further information on the Disclosure Scotland confidential checking service telephone: the Disclosure Scotland Helpline on and ask to speak to the operations manager in confidence, or email

NSV

For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the Demystifying Vetting website.

Reasonable Adjustments

If a person with disabilities is at a substantial disadvantage compared to a non-disabled person, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should:

• Contact Government Recruitment Service via as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
• Complete the "Assistance Required" section in the "Additional Requirements" page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you're deaf, a language service professional.

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.

Feedback

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check .

See our vetting charter .

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles .

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy .

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans initiative.

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants
Job contact :

• Name :
• Email :

Recruitment team

• Email :

Further information

If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the Civil Service recruitment principles and you wish to make a complaint, then contact the Government Recruitment Service via If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission.

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