Lead Automation Engineer in Derry

A LITTLE INFORMATION ABOUT US! Foods Connected is an award winning cloud based software platform that helps retailers and food companies across the world manage their supply chain, quality control and trading and planning management. Our software solutions are currently utilised by 10 of the largest food retailers in the world. As a team, we provide tools that help our customers manage their processes in a fast and efficient way and provide real-time visibility and reporting on what is happening in their business.

At Foods Connected, we recognise that our employees are our most important asset and we value creating a great working environment to ensure our team enjoy coming into the office every day working together and solving problems for our customers. Whether we are in the middle of a fast and intense development sprint, on a Teams call discussing our project statuses or enjoying a game of ping-pong or pool in the office, it is important to us that our employees are happy and delivering the best possible result for our customers. We’re always keen to welcome talented individuals to join our expanding team. So if you’re driven, with a passion for developing simple software solutions, creating great user experiences, designing scalable solutions for real business challenges and ensuring customer happiness then we’re looking for you!

IS THIS SOMETHING THAT INTERESTS YOU? The Lead Automation Engineer will own test automation as a discipline across our product engineering organisation. This is not a manual testing role with automation on the side, automation is the role. You will define the frameworks, set the CI/CD quality gates, and lift the wider QA and engineering teams up to a level where automated coverage scales with the product instead of headcount. You'll lead the modernisation of our test estate from a legacy Selenium suite toward a modern, AI-augmented automation stack, and you'll be the technical authority that pillar QAs and engineers look to when they're writing tests.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Own the automation strategy
• Define and build the test automation frameworks for both our front-end and back-end estates — choosing the tools, setting the patterns, and writing the reference implementations others will follow.
• Set coverage targets (unit, integration, end-to-end) and the policy for how they're enforced.
• Establish CI/CD quality gates in GitHub Actions: fail builds on test failure, block deployments below threshold, surface flakiness before it rots the suite.
• Own reporting, dashboards, and the overall health of the test infrastructure.
• Drive the migration from legacy Selenium
• Lead the parallel-stack testing problem: legacy suites must keep running while the modern stack is built out alongside them.
• Design and execute the migration path from Selenium toward Cypress and Playwright at scale — not test-by-test, but as a structured programme with prioritisation, tooling, and a clear endpoint.
• Multiply the team's capability
• Train pillar QAs to write automated tests in C# / .NET or TypeScript depending on their stack.
• Train engineers on unit test expectations, integration test design, and the quality bar in code review.
• Mentor and pair with QAs and engineers on real test code — this role succeeds when the rest of the org gets better at automation, not when you write every test yourself.
• Use AI tooling as a force multiplier
• Embed AI assistants and MCP-connected tooling (browsers, issue trackers, internal APIs, documentation) into the day-to-day authoring, triage, and review workflow.
• Set the standards for how the wider team uses AI in QA — what to trust, what to verify, where it accelerates and where it doesn't.
• Lead technically across pillars
• Partner with Senior QA Engineers on test architecture for high-risk, cross-service releases.
• Participate in code reviews with a focus on testability, coverage, and quality.
• Continuously improve the tooling, methodology, and standards.

EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS:

To perform this job successfully, the Lead Automation Engineer should have experience with:

Essential

• Proven track record building and running automation frameworks at scale — not just authoring tests inside someone else's framework.
• Demonstrable experience driving Selenium-to-Cypress or Selenium-to-Playwright migrations across a meaningful test estate.
• Strong CI/CD engineering: building pipelines, designing quality gates, debugging flakiness, managing test infrastructure.
• Proficiency in both C# / .NET and TypeScript, or strong proficiency in one with credible working knowledge of the other.
• Experience leading and mentoring other QAs and engineers on test writing — this role is judged on team-wide capability, not personal output.
• Fluency in using AI tooling day-to-day (Claude Code or similar agentic tools, MCP servers) to accelerate test design, authoring, triage, and review.
• Excellent communication: you can defend a framework choice to engineering leadership and pair with a junior QA on the same day.

Preferred

• Experience defining coverage policy and getting it adopted across engineering teams.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes-based environments and how that shapes test infrastructure decisions.
• Performance and security testing experience.
• Track record running QA in a parallel-stack modernisation (legacy and modern systems live alongside each other).
• Agile delivery experience at team and programme level.

BENEFITS:

• Competitive Base Salary
• Generous Holiday Package - 25 Days + 10 Public Holidays
• Private Medical, Dental & Vision
• Employee Wellness Program and Classes
• Flexible model of hybrid working