Senior Software Quality Engineer in London

PolyAI automates customer service through lifelike voice assistants that let customers lead a conversation. Our voice assistants make it possible for businesses to deliver outstanding customer service that rivals their human agents. Our customers, which include the world’s leading logos, are expanding how they use our platform, driving automation of critical customer service operations and integrating PolyAI into their daily customer service workflows.

We are seeking a Senior Software Quality Engineer to join our SQX team at PolyAI. In this role, you will architect and scale automation frameworks, define quality strategy across pods, and drive AI-augmented testing practices – engineering quality into the product lifecycle rather than gatekeeping at the end. The Senior SQE operates across pods with deep technical mastery, defines strategy, mentors teams, and drives innovation. This role blends Engineering Craft, Quality Strategy & Insights, and Experience-Driven Quality – and requires someone who can influence technical decisions and champion a culture of continuous improvement.

• Architect automation frameworks from scratch and define tooling standards for the organisation.
• Evaluate and introduce new automation technologies; build reusable libraries and utilities adopted across teams.
• Drive automation coverage targets and ROI measurement.
• Architect scalable test infrastructure and environment provisioning.
• Champion feature flag-based release strategies with quality controls.
• Partner with platform engineering to embed quality into the deployment lifecycle.
• Own flaky test detection, quarantine strategies, and test suite reliability – ensuring the automation suite is a trusted signal, not noise.

• Drive innovation in generative test design, predictive defect analysis, and AI powered observability.
• Define org-wide quality metrics taxonomy; build exec-facing quality intelligence dashboards using data analysis tools SQL, BI/observability platforms.
• Architect observability pipelines and anomaly detection.
• Establish feedback loops between production user data and quality engineering.

• Define the experience quality strategy, ensuring quality is measured by customer outcomes, not just defect counts.
• Define quality gates that connect release decisions to real user impact data.
• Perform root cause analysis on failures and lead RCA sessions.
• Support exploratory, regression, and release testing efforts when needed.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in test automation and quality engineering.
• Strong hands-on experience architecting automation frameworks using Playwright, Cypress, or similar.
• Proficiency in TypeScript or Python.
• Solid experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, GitOps).
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and containerised test infrastructure.
• Strong knowledge of API testing Postman, REST Assured, Karate, etc.
• Experience defining quality metrics, telemetry, and reporting dashboards.
• Proven ability to mentor and guide junior and mid-level engineers.
• Deep understanding of QA methodologies, shift-left practices, and the full SDLC.
• Hands‑on experience with Git and version control best practices.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills – able to influence without authority and advocate for quality across teams.

• Practical experience with AI/ML-based testing tools and strategies (self-healing frameworks, LLM-assisted test generation, predictive defect analysis).
• Experience with AI-powered observability to detect real-time UX drift.
• Experience with performance and load testing tools (JMeter, Grafana, k6).
• Background in experience-driven quality – tying quality outcomes to user experience metrics (task completion rates, CSAT, error rates).
• SDET background or equivalent engineering depth.

We offer competitive compensation based on experience, expertise, and the level of responsibility. This role also includes equity, giving you the opportunity to share in the long‑term success of the business. The listed expectations reflect what we are hiring for, so we encourage you to review the job description carefully.

PolyAI is proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All employment decisions at PolyAI will be based on the business needs without attention to ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, neurodiversity status or disability status.