Join to apply for the Lead Test Engineer - Cloud Platforms role at UK Home Office

The Home Office Quality Assurance and Testing Team (QAT) is seeking individuals passionate about quality and engineering excellence to join their well-established, award‑winning team. QAT delivers a large‑scale shared service through 750 QA professionals, supporting essential UK services and fostering a strong culture of continuous improvement, particularly in DevOps and cloud environments.

Recently recognised as Testing Team of the Year at the 2024 European Software Testing Awards and re‑certified at TMMi level 5 with a global best score, the team prides itself on industry‑leading quality standards. The Core Cloud team, a key part of Test Engineering, is building a new strategic hosting platform using Amazon Web Services, focusing on a product‑centric approach and enhancing the developer experience at the Home Office.

What will you be doing?

• Setting the direction for QAT Strategy and Test Engineering within the AWS‑focused strategic cloud platform.
• Developing and implementing innovative tooling and DevSecOps best practices.
• Guiding, mentoring, and supporting engineers at all levels, including junior QAT engineers.
• Providing technical advice to improve engineering processes and practices.
• Embedding Infrastructure as Code test frameworks and implementing a modern test pyramid aligned with CI/CD pipelines.
• Building scalable, efficient, and cost‑effective quality engineering solutions, while measuring code quality and using risk‑based decision‑making to help the QAT practice thrive through innovation.

Your skills for this role

• Collaborating with a wide variety of stakeholders to implement effective quality measures and mechanisms.
• Strong technical automation skills with the ability to write well‑structured reusable maintainable tests and test utilities (Java, Python, TS/JS preferred).
• Leading a technical team of test engineers, this includes experience with DevSecOps, Cloud Platforms, Containers, Networking, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), SCM e.g. GitHub / Bitbucket.
• Design and deliver platform test approaches involving test automation environments, utilising virtualisation and containerisation.
• Experienced with DevSecOps environment including IaC testing, Unit testing, Contract testing, API testing, E2E testing, Resilience testing.
• Develop and enhance platform test engineering tools to support QA, Testing and Software Development in complex environments, with experience in AWS, Linux, AWS SDK, Pytest and TerraTest, CI/CD tools. eg. Jenkins/ GitHub Actions/ArgoCD.

Benefits

• Exceptional pension: Employer contribution of 28.97%.
• Generous leave: 25 days annual leave (rising to 30 with service), 8 public holidays, and 1 day for the King’s Birthday.
• Flexible working: Options include full‑time, part‑time, compressed hours, job sharing, and a hybrid model (minimum 60% on‑site).
• Learning and development: Access to training, technical accreditations, and funded qualifications (subject to approval).
• Inclusion and recognition: A culture that champions diversity, enhanced parental leave schemes, annual bonuses, and recognition awards.

Learn more about our benefits: Benefits - Home Office Careers

Please note: This role requires SC clearance. To meet national security vetting requirements, you must typically have been resident in the UK for at least five years.

Ready to lead and innovate? Click "Apply" to access the full job description and salary details.

Seniority level

• Mid‑Senior level

Employment type

• Full‑time

Job function

• Information Technology and General Business

Industries

• IT Services and IT Consulting, IT System Testing and Evaluation, and Information Services