Senior QA Engineer in Cheadle Hulme

We're looking for a Senior QA Engineer to join our Insurer team, working on CDL's Insurer System (Policy Manager), a modern, cloud‐based platform used by insurers and Managing General Agents (MGAs) to manage policies, risk data, and related financial processes. In this role, you'll help ensure our platform is reliable, scalable, and easy to use, supporting features such as policy administration, data imports, reporting, and integrations with external systems. You'll work closely with software engineers, product managers, and stakeholders, embedding quality throughout the software delivery process. This is a hands‐on role for someone who enjoys improving how teams build and test software, has a strong interest in automation and AI‐enabled tooling, and wants to make a real impact on a growing product used across the insurance industry.

What You'll Do

• Lead and improve testing and automation practices within the Insurer team, helping deliver a high‐quality platform for insurers and MGAs.
• Work with software engineers and product teams to ensure quality is considered from the earliest stages of design and development.
• Validate complex data flows, including policy data imports, updates, and reprocessing, ensuring accuracy and reliability.
• Support testing of integrations and APIs, connecting our platform to third‐party systems used across the insurance ecosystem.
• Help maintain confidence in financial and accounting‐related features, including premium data, reporting, and audit trails.
• Drive best practice across functional, performance, and security testing in a cloud‐hosted environment.
• Improve test automation coverage and reliability, contributing to CI/CD pipelines and fast feedback for teams.
• Coach and mentor others, helping build strong quality and testing practices across the team.
• Continuously look for ways to improve tooling, processes, and how quality is approached day‐to‐day.
• Encourage pragmatic thinking, innovation, and high standards while keeping delivery focused and practical.

What You'll Bring

• A strong understanding of modern testing principles and how they apply across cross‐functional delivery teams.
• The ability to define and apply effective test strategies for complex, data‐driven systems, balancing automation, exploratory testing, and risk‐based approaches.
• Experience promoting a shift‐left approach to quality, working with teams to embed good testing and quality practices early in the development lifecycle.
• Confidence investigating issues across environments, using logs, metrics, and data to understand failures and support root‐cause analysis.
• A mindset of continuous improvement, actively contributing to better testing practices, standards, and tooling through collaboration and knowledge sharing.
• A solid working knowledge of TDD and BDD, and when to apply them effectively.
• A collaborative, pragmatic approach, working closely with Product and Engineering to deliver shared outcomes.
• Broad testing knowledge with a strong specialism in test automation.
• Hands‐on experience with modern automated testing tools such as Karate and Cypress, applied thoughtfully across the test pyramid.
• Familiarity with a range of testing and delivery tools across the SDLC, including tools for API testing and documentation, exploratory testing, performance testing, and work tracking (e.g. Postman/Bruno, Swagger UI, Gatling, JIRA).
• Experience working with CI/CD pipelines, contributing to and maintaining automated quality checks within modern delivery workflows, such as GitLab.
• Comfort working within AWS‐hosted, cloud‐based systems, supporting effective testing and quality assurance across distributed services.
• A proven ability to take improvement ideas from concept through to delivery.
• Practical experience using AI‐enabled tooling or techniques within the delivery lifecycle to improve testing efficiency, coverage, or insight.
• Curiosity and openness to emerging AI‐assisted testing approaches, with a focus on real‐world, practical application.

Desirable Extras

• Knowledge of accessibility standards and practices (e.g. WCAG), with the ability to consider accessibility as part of broader testing strategies.
• Experience designing and executing test approaches across both web and desktop applications, ensuring consistent quality and usability.
• Exposure to AI‐powered testing tools.
• Confidence querying relational databases (e.g. Postgres) using SQL to support testing, debugging, and root‐cause analysis (e.g. using DBeaver or similar tools).
• Experience with performance and security testing.
• Previous experience working in or alongside the insurance or financial services domain.

Benefits

• Salary: Up to £54,000 p.a.
• Hybrid Working (2 Days a Week in the office - SK4 2HD).
• Truly flexible working.
• 25 days holiday to start, increasing by 1 day per 1 year of service up to 30 days.
• Top employer for 10th year running.
• Excellent training and development platform.
• Opportunities for career progression.
• Health and Wellbeing programme.
• Virtual activities, lunch and learns, coffee mornings and meetups.
• Life and health assurance.
• Electric Vehicle Scheme.
• Established Recognition Award System.
• Great Parental Benefits.
• Diversity and Inclusion network.
• Pension scheme.
• Community projects and volunteer days.
• Refer a friend bonus.
• Campus Benefits.
• On‐site free parking.
• Open plan modern offices.
• Quiet spaces are also available.
• Shuttle bus to and from the station.
• Subsidised restaurant.
• Games room and chill out zone.
• Annual Hackathon & Deep Racer Events.
• Social activities, regular social events through our social group Xtra, including a summer BBQ, competitions, bowling, go‐karting, football games, Winter party and much more.
• Car wash, barber, yoga classes, boot camp and massage services all on site.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Shower and dry rooms.

Diversity and inclusion

We're on a journey to keep innovating, that means welcoming new ideas and ways of thinking. CDL recognises that building a diverse workforce is critical to the success of our business. We strongly encourage applications from a diverse talent pool and welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility requirements and workplace adjustments with all our applicants.