Automation Test lead with AI in Sheffield

Sheffield-UK Hybrid Mode to Office Inside IR35 Experience 5 Plus Years Leading Automation Testing Projects with strong IAM Testing experience Location UK

Role Summary We are looking for a highly skilled Automation Test Lead with strong expertise in Identity and Access Management (IAM) skilled in identity orchestration, API testing, data ingestion and transformation, and event-driven Pub/Sub architectures. This role focuses on testing secure scalable workload identities and access workflows across Google Cloud Platform, integrating identity services with custom APIs, Pub/Sub pipelines, and cloud-native applications.

Using an automation-first approach, you will collaborate closely with tech leads, Cloud Security, DevOps, and Application Engineering teams to thoroughly test robust IAM identity lifecycle workflows and secure service integrations that support enterprise-level cloud and Identity operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Test Architecture Strategy and Governance Hands-on Strategic
• Define and maintain an overall test strategy that describes the approach, environment, scope, risks, and required resources.
• Establish test strategies that cover deterministic and non-deterministic AI behaviours.
• Define and maintain test entry and exit criteria.
• Ensure FRN/FR traceability.
• Perform test case reviews QA to ensure coverage and traceability to requirements/design.
• Establish automation testing standards, best practices, and governance frameworks across the organisation.
• Liaise with business areas and technical leads on scenario definition across SIT/OAT/UAT and the wider testing lifecycle as required.
• Generate regulatory evidence as needed.

Automation Engineering and CI/CD

• Plan, develop, execute, maintain, and continuously improve automated test frameworks and automated test scripts for IAM applications.
• Build automation frameworks that integrate AI capabilities for test generation, analysis, failure triage, self-healing, and intelligent reporting supporting capability.
• Validate AI workflows, orchestration engines, and event-driven systems (Pub/Sub queues, etc.).
• Create and manage CI/CD pipelines to run automated tests, generate reports, and notify teams of test results.
• Test and validate functions and decision logic defined as code including policy-as-code.
• Generate synthetic and anonymised test data.

Test Delivery, Defects, and Stakeholder Management

• Develop and execute test plans, test cases, test data, test scenarios, and associated testing documentation aligned to requirements and technical specifications.
• Report and track defects and issues by writing or automating clear and thorough bug reports, attend triage meetings, and verify fixes.
• Identify process and application issues and provide suggestions for improvement.
• Communicate progress regularly to senior stakeholders and programme leads, tailoring the level of detail to the audience.

Technical Leadership Non-line management

• Provide technical leadership by leading and mentoring engineers within the team.
• Collaborate effectively within the wider test team.
• Ability to continuously learn and adapt to new technologies/tools (e.g., AI tools and agentic AI).
• Deliver within an Agile methodology.

Required Skills

• Extensive experience in Identity and Access Management (IAM).
• Strong backend automation experience using Python and Pytest with 5 years leading automation projects.
• Proven experience testing functions and decision logic defined as code including policy-as-code.
• Experience validating event-driven platforms (Pub/Sub queues, Kafka, etc.) and batch processing.
• Experience with identity warehousing and protocols/formats for data ingestion including SCIM, REST API, LDAP, OIDC, and CSV.
• Experience with policy-based testing (RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, PBAC).
• Experience in consumer-driven contract testing.
• Experience in risk-based test prioritisation.
• DevOps CI/CD integration experience including integrating automation tests into GitHub and CI/CD pipelines and implementing shift-left testing practices.
• Strong experience in cloud testing approaches and methodology, especially GCP; additional exposure to AWS, Azure, Entra, Ali Cloud, and systems such as ServiceNow, AD, and ADLDS.
• Extensive experience using JIRA and Zephyr (mandatory).
• Experience executing defined test plans including coordination, tracking, and reporting.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with proven stakeholder engagement at all levels.
• Proven ability to lead and mentor engineers (technical leadership).

Desired Skills

• Knowledge of AI governance model evaluation, explainability, and responsible AI principles.
• Exposure to orchestration tools like n8n.
• Exposure to GenAI tool integrations into Quality Engineering.
• Experience testing solutions built on GraphDB (Neo4j).
• Experience testing OPA Rego policies.
• Exposure to containerised test execution.
• Knowledge of JMeter, Gatling.

Mandatory Skills: PyTest-Automation, Python Data Automation Testing