QA Lead in Tavistock

Hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00am – 5:00pm (37.5 hours per week)

Job type: Full-time, Permanent

Salary: £40,000 – £50,000 dependent on experience

Package: 24 days holiday per annum + Bank Holidays, Annual performance-based bonus, Friendly, supportive, and collaborative team culture, Ongoing professional development opportunities, Sick pay, Bereavement leave.

Overview of Role: The QA Lead is responsible for establishing and leading the quality assurance function at Care Control. This includes building strong manual testing practices, coordinating regression and UAT cycles, and maturing our automation capability. Care Control has an initial suite of Playwright tests, and the QA Lead will evaluate the suitability of Playwright as the automation framework, enhancing it where appropriate or recommending improvements as our testing needs evolve. Working closely with the Engineering Manager and CTO, the QA Lead ensures each release meets required quality standards while shaping a scalable, future-proof QA approach.

Role Responsibilities:

• Establish QA processes across manual testing, regression cycles, UAT support, and automation strategy.
• Evaluate the suitability of Playwright as the core automation framework, assessing maintainability, reliability, and coverage.
• Enhance and extend the existing Playwright suite if validated as the right choice, or work with Engineering to refine tooling direction.
• Plan and execute testing activities across monthly releases, ensuring critical workflows receive appropriate coverage.
• Develop and maintain regression test suites and ensure automation complements manual testing as maturity increases.
• Collaborate with the Engineering Manager to define quality gates, acceptance criteria, and release readiness.
• Work closely with Product and Customer Service to understand user workflows and business-critical scenarios.
• Document defects, support root cause analysis, and verify fixes in partnership with engineers.
• Provide guidance to engineering and offshore teams on quality practices, automation expectations, and testability.
• Contribute to building a predictable and well-governed SDLC through defined QA standards and workflows.

What Success Looks Like/ Key Metrics:

• Clear, validated direction for automation tooling (Playwright or alternative) aligned to long-term needs.
• Stable, predictable releases with reduced production issues.
• Well-documented regression and manual test suites covering critical business workflows.
• Structured and efficient UAT cycles with early identification of defects.
• Increasing automation coverage over time with measurable reduction in manual rework.

Experience & Qualifications:

• Proven experience in QA roles within SaaS or digital product environments.
• Experience evaluating or adopting test automation frameworks (e.g., Playwright, Cypress, Selenium).
• Strong background in manual testing, regression planning, and UAT support.
• Experience in Agile or hybrid Agile environments.
• Understanding of web and API testing for React, React Native, .NET Core, and SQL-based systems.
• Ability to design, document, and execute effective manual and automated tests.
• Strong defect identification, documentation, and communication skills.
• Ability to assess and recommend automation tooling, including Playwright.
• Prioritisation and risk-based testing skills across critical workflows.
• Experience coordinating with engineering, product, and offshore teams.
• Hands-on Playwright experience, including extending and maintaining suites.
• Experience integrating automated tests into pipelines (Azure DevOps preferred).
• Familiarity with API contract testing or related tools.
• Understanding of accessibility, performance, or security testing approaches.
• Experience coordinating or supporting business-led UAT.

Personal Qualities:

• Detail-oriented and committed to high-quality outcomes.
• Methodical, structured, and calm when handling multiple priorities.
• Proactive and comfortable building processes and evaluating tooling.
• Strong communicator able to work across engineering, product, and support.
• Analytical thinker who seeks to prevent defects, not just detect them.

This can be a hybrid role, with flexibility to work 2 days from home and 3 days in the office each week.

Are you currently based within commuting distance of Tavistock, Devon, or willing to relocate to ensure you can fulfil the hybrid working requirement of a minimum of 3 days per week in the office?

Please note that this role involves a hybrid working model to facilitate team collaboration and engagement. Hybrid working is not available until successful completion of the probationary period.

Have you led or coordinated QA activities that include manual testing, regression testing, and UAT support?

Do you have hands-on experience evaluating or working with modern test automation frameworks (e.g. Playwright, Cypress, Selenium)?

Experience: working in QA roles for SaaS or digital product teams: 4 years (required)