qa engineer (auto) for complex digital services

Methods is a UK-based IT services consultancy that partners with central government departments and agencies to transform public-sector operations. It develops people-centred, safe, and future-ready business and technical solutions, and is expanding its private-sector client portfolio.

• Design, develop, and maintain automated API, integration, and end-to-end tests
• Contribute reusable test components and maintainable automation frameworks, apply sound coding practices, and participate in code reviews
• Define testable acceptance criteria and positive, negative, and boundary scenarios with developers, business analysts, and product owners
• Select appropriate testing levels for risks while balancing coverage, execution time, and maintenance effort
• Integrate and maintain automated tests in Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines, providing timely, actionable feedback
• Test asynchronous workflows and service interactions, including event processing, messaging, retries, and failure recovery
• Verify business outcomes through APIs, database checks, and user journeys, including downstream processing and data consistency
• Create and maintain repeatable test data, accounting for environment dependencies, test isolation, and parallel execution
• Investigate failures using application logs, API responses, database queries, and pipeline results; distinguish application defects from automation, data, and environment issues
• Improve suite reliability by addressing flaky tests, duplication, and regression coverage gaps
• Turn production defects and recurring incidents into repeatable automated regression scenarios
• Perform targeted exploratory testing and contribute to performance, accessibility, security, and operational readiness testing with relevant specialists
• Maintain test coverage, execution records, and release evidence in Jira/Zephyr, ensuring traceability to changes, environments, and releases
• Raise reproducible defects and collaborate on triage, resolution, and verification
• Communicate testing progress, outcomes, residual risks, and coverage limitations to technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Strong hands-on Java programming skills and experience writing, reviewing, and maintaining automated test code
• Practical experience with Serenity BDD, Cucumber/Gherkin, Selenium WebDriver, and REST Assured, supported by frameworks such as JUnit and AssertJ
• Strong understanding of HTTP, REST APIs, JSON, authentication, validation, and error handling
• Experience testing distributed or microservice-based applications, including asynchronous processing and messaging
• Ability to verify end-to-end business workflows across service boundaries, including data persistence and downstream outcomes
• Confidence using SQL and application logs to prepare test data, investigate failures, and validate results
• Experience with Maven, Git, pull requests, and automated build pipelines
• Experience integrating and troubleshooting automated tests in Azure DevOps YAML pipelines or a comparable CI/CD platform
• Understanding of test isolation, parallel execution, synchronisation, and causes of unreliable automated tests
• Experience working in Agile teams and contributing to refinement, Three Amigos discussions, and behaviour-driven development
• Ability to prioritise testing based on business risk and balance component, integration, and end-to-end testing
• Experience managing defects, test execution, and traceable evidence with Jira/Zephyr or equivalent tools
• Clear communication, collaborative problem-solving, and ownership of issues through resolution
• Eligibility to obtain SC clearance
• Willingness to undergo Security Clearance; candidates must complete a Baseline Personnel Security Standard during onboarding. Failure to meet this and associated criteria may delay or prevent employment
• Будет плюсом: experience supporting complex public-sector digital services, understanding of CQRS and event-sourced systems, experience investigating message delivery, retries, and dead-letter queues with technologies such as Apache ActiveMQ Artemis, performance/load/stress testing with JMeter or k6, experience with Splunk or Grafana, experience testing applications hosted in Microsoft Azure and containerised environments including Kubernetes, browser automation with Playwright or WebdriverIO, accessibility/security/operational readiness testing, data migration testing, ISTQB/ISEB certification or equivalent practical experience

• Development access to LinkedIn Learning, a management development programme, and training
• 24/7 Confidential employee assistance programme
• Social events and commitment to charitable causes
• 25 Days of annual leave
• Pension Salary Exchange Scheme with 4% employer contribution and 5% employee contribution
• Discretionary company bonus based on company and individual performance
• Life Assurance of 4 times base salary
• Non-contributory Private Medical Insurance, including spouse and dependants
• Non-contributory Worldwide Travel Insurance, including spouse and dependants