QA Test Lead

Collinson is the global, privately-owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers.

Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme. Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special. We work with the world’s leading payment networks, over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide.

We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception - from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP. Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.

Key clients include Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC.

Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work.

Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 2,200 global colleagues.

**Purpose of the job**

We’re looking for a QA Test Lead who’s passionate about quality; not just as a phase, but as a core part of how great software gets built. In this role, you’ll help shape what “great” looks like across our engineering teams, including setting test standards, supporting engineers and making sure quality is everyone’s responsibility.

You’ll be embedded in a collaborative environment where software is shipped fast, iteratively, and often. Your work will focus on making sure things don’t just work but work well together.
You’ll bring clarity, structure and confidence to the way we test by balancing automation with human insight and keeping the end-user in mind.

Your role would straddle multiple engineering squads, supporting with not just the QA strategy, but personally leading the automated testing efforts as well.
You’ll bring your considerable knowledge of test automation to help us build new products that are reliable, performant, and resilient.
If you’re curious, love asking the awkward questions, and want to support software engineers build and iterate quickly, you’ll thrive here.

**Key Responsibilities**
- Define and uphold the standards for test quality across engineering squads, ensuring consistency and confidence in our releases.
- Oversee the work of our Automation QAs/SDeTs, and manual testers.
- Write high quality integration and end-to-end tests across our software portfolio.
- Partner with engineers, product managers, and delivery leads to embed quality thinking from day one, and not as an after-thought.
- Design and oversee test strategies that combine automation, exploratory testing, and regression coverage.
- Drive the implementation and evolution of automated testing frameworks, ensuring integration into our CI/CD pipelines.
- Own the structure and health of test suites and regression packs, helping teams keep them lean, relevant, and valuable.
- Support squads in front-end, API, and end-to-end testing, using tools like Playwright, Cypress, and other modern frameworks.
- Facilitate and promote BDD and 3-amigos sessions, helping clarify requirements and prevent misunderstandings before they happen.
- Help engineers understand and own quality; coaching without gatekeeping, advising without blocking
- Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to ensure cross-squad functionality and integration is properly tested.
- Get involved in the testing cycle, helping to investigate issues, write tests, support on manual QAing, and signing-off changes.

**Knowledge, skills and experience required**
- Strong background in quality assurance across automated and manual testing.
- Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks (e.g. Cypress, Playright), and API testing tools (e.g. Postman, RestAssured).
- Confident writing automated tests in Typescript.
- Deep understanding of software development workflows, and how to embed quality within them.
- You’re comfortable performing and organising performance testing with tools such as K6, JMeter.
- Experience integrating tests into CI/CD pipelines and driving pipeline quality.
- Comfortable facilitating and contributing to BDD-style collaboration and 3-amigos sessions.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills - you're as comfortable pairing with an Engineer as you are w