Senior Quality Engineer (Test Automation & Transformation) in Belfast

About 8 West Consulting provides consultancy services and software solutions to clients across the US, Europe and the UK. We work in sectors including insurance, healthcare and retail, helping organisations tackle complex technology challenges and modernise critical platforms.

The Opportunity

We are looking for a senior, hands-on Quality Engineer to deliver dependable testing and practical automation improvements on enterprise client projects. You will own quality activities within your engagements, replace valuable manual regression checks with reliable automation, and apply AI-assisted methods to improve test design, data and delivery feedback. This is an active engineering and delivery role, not a strategy-only position. You will write automation, create test data, investigate defects and support releases yourself. You will plan improvements within your project, work closely with developers and share techniques that other teams can reuse.

Key Responsibilities

• Own project quality. Plan and execute functional, integration, regression and exploratory testing on assigned client projects; investigate defects and support releases.
• Automate within live projects. Prioritise high-value manual regression checks and implement stable, maintained automation without losing sight of current delivery obligations.
• Build and maintain test solutions. Write, debug and maintain UI, API, integration and data tests; integrate checks into pipelines and resolve unreliable tests.
• Engineer reliable test data. Create realistic, repeatable data for complex workflows and linked records; automate setup, isolation, reset and cleanup rather than depend on shared existing data.
• Apply AI in testing. Use AI tools in live work to derive scenarios, generate and refine tests and data, inspect code changes and analyse failures; validate results and protect sensitive information.
• Improve project feedback. Work with developers on testability, environments, regression coverage, reporting and traceability; retain exploratory testing where judgement matters.
• Communicate clearly. Explain project-level quality risks, coverage, priorities, trade-offs and progress to developers, product owners, delivery managers and client stakeholders.
• Introduce practical improvements. Assess current project practices, try focused changes, demonstrate results and share effective approaches with colleagues.
• Apply enterprise controls. Maintain appropriate test evidence, access controls and safe handling of client information, including approved AI tools and processes.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Enterprise automation delivery. Significant hands-on contribution to moving manual testing towards automation within an established enterprise application, project or team, with evidence of results.
• Hands-on test engineering. Able to code, debug and maintain production test suites in C#, TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, Java or equivalent; no single language is mandatory.
• Broad testing techniques and tooling. Experience across UI, API, integration, data and regression testing with Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, Postman or equivalent; selects tools pragmatically.
• Microsoft enterprise environments. Experience testing .NET, SQL Server and/or Azure applications, with Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, Git and related engineering practices.
• Test data creation and engineering. Builds deterministic, independent test data for complex relational and cross-system scenarios using APIs, SQL, builders or fixtures; understands integrity, masking, edge cases and reset.
• Applied AI-assisted testing. Has used AI/LLM tools on real projects to generate and validate test cases and test data, and to support script development or failure analysis; can explain benefits and safeguards.
• CI/CD and live delivery. Integrates checks into pipelines, improves suite stability and reporting, and takes responsibility for testing under project delivery pressure.
• Project planning and execution. Assesses current coverage, prioritises by risk, plans manageable increments and delivers measurable improvements within an assigned project.
• Communication and collaboration. Explains technical issues in plain English, works well with developers and delivery leads, and shares knowledge to help colleagues adopt better practices.

Desirable Experience

• Enterprise automation delivery. Significant hands-on contribution to moving manual testing towards automation within an established enterprise application, project or team, with evidence of results.
• Hands-on test engineering. Able to code, debug and maintain production test suites in C#, TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, Java or equivalent; no single language is mandatory.
• Broad testing techniques and tooling. Experience across UI, API, integration, data and regression testing with Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, Postman or equivalent; selects tools pragmatically.
• Microsoft enterprise environments. Experience testing .NET, SQL Server and/or Azure applications, with Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, Git and related engineering practices.
• Test data creation and engineering. Builds deterministic, independent test data for complex relational and cross-system scenarios using APIs, SQL, builders or fixtures; understands integrity, masking, edge cases and reset.
• Applied AI-assisted testing. Has used AI/LLM tools on real projects to generate and validate test cases and test data, and to support script development or failure analysis; can explain benefits and safeguards.
• CI/CD and live delivery. Integrates checks into pipelines, improves suite stability and reporting, and takes responsibility for testing under project delivery pressure.
• Project planning and execution. Assesses current coverage, prioritises by risk, plans manageable increments and delivers measurable improvements within an assigned project.
• Communication and collaboration. Explains technical issues in plain English, works well with developers and delivery leads, and shares knowledge to help colleagues adopt better practices.

Personal Profile

You are practical, organised and comfortable owning testing work from start to finish. You enjoy writing tests and creating dependable data yourself, make sensible use of AI and validate its output. You build good relationships, communicate risks early and improve the way your project works without losing focus on client commitments.

What Success Looks Like

Your assigned client projects receive dependable testing and increasingly reliable automated regression coverage. Tests use reproducible, independent data rather than brittle shared records. AI supports verified quality engineering work, feedback improves and releases are more predictable. Your colleagues benefit from practical approaches you have demonstrated and shared.