Test Engineer - National Crime Agency - HEO in England

Location: Bristol, London, Warrington. For roles based in London, your contractual place of work will be Stratford. While the Stratford site is expected to become operational from November 2025 - March 2026, you will be required to carry out your contractual duties from Vauxhall or another reasonable location on a temporary basis during the interim period. Please note that, as Stratford will be your contractual place of work, any subsequent move from a temporary location will not entitle you to payments for travel time or costs under the Relocation and Excess Travel Policy.

About the job

The Test Engineer plays a critical role in ensuring the reliability, quality and performance of the NCA's technical solutions. They will apply a strong understanding of modern testing practices to validate systems across complex business operations, projects and programmes. The role requires an ability to design and execute effective test strategies, identify defects and performance issues, and provide clear, evidence based assurance to stakeholders. Working closely with developers, analysts and delivery teams, the Test Engineer will help ensure that services are robust, secure and meet operational needs, while continuously improving test processes and advocating for quality throughout the delivery lifecycle.

As a Test Engineer, you will be responsible for assuring the quality, reliability and performance of tooling and capabilities delivered across Tier 1 and Tier 2. You will work within defined quality and performance strategies, ensuring all testing activity is completed within agreed timescales, budgets and standards, and that outcomes meet or exceed stakeholder expectations. You will apply a demonstrable understanding of IT solution architecture - including GUIs, operating systems, databases, hardware and input devices, networks and security components, applications and services - to shape test strategies, approaches and detailed plans. This technical insight will guide the Quality and Performance team and ensure testing is risk based, robust and aligned to the Agency's operational needs. A key part of the role is building strong relationships across the Agency and with wider stakeholders. You will work closely with these partners to ensure products, tooling and services are aligned to the appropriate standards, fully assured and able to support the NCA's broader digital and operational objectives.

This role aligns to Test Engineer in the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Test Improvement, Optimisation and Strategy: Help deliver the ongoing improvement and optimisation of testing practices, ensuring test environments, techniques and approaches are fit for purpose. Design, build, maintain and execute high quality functional and non functional tests that align to user needs and system requirements. Develop, maintain and apply key test artefacts, including Quality and Performance Test Strategies and Test Plans, while proactively identifying opportunities to enhance the end to end test process.
• Risk Management and Quality Assurance: Identify, document and manage testing related risks and issues, putting appropriate mitigations in place and escalating to the Test Manager where necessary to avoid delivery impacts. Make informed, context aware decisions relating to testing activities within the delivery environment, ensuring quality assurance remains robust and aligned to programme objectives.
• Test Execution, Data and Automation: Manage and deliver functional and non functional test activities, using a broad range of testing techniques to assure performance, quality and reliability. Create, manage and maintain test data, and support the development, enhancement and use of automation frameworks and scripts. Complete test work, provide feedback to team members, and collect testing metrics and statistics to support clear, evidence based reporting.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Work collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders to ensure testing activities support high quality delivery aligned to organisational standards.

Person specification

• Communication and Stakeholder Engagement: Communicate effectively with both technical and non technical stakeholders, including gathering non functional requirements and clearly articulating complex risks or issues to senior audiences. Apply critical thinking and ask insightful questions to ensure requirements, processes and deliverables are fully understood. Present findings, risks and recommendations clearly to wider teams, ensuring shared understanding and informed decision making.
• Test Analysis, Design and Execution: Conduct investigative work to understand problems, inefficiencies and opportunities within existing processes. Collect, analyse and interpret complex or conflicting information to propose practical, evidence based solutions. Design and execute tests across all phases - functional, non functional and User Acceptance Testing - ensuring coverage aligns to user needs and requirements. Apply Specification by Example and similar techniques to support requirement clarity and testability.
• Test Planning, Quality Assurance and Continuous Improvement: Develop and maintain robust quality practices, advocating accountable quality throughout the delivery lifecycle. Verify that the right work is being undertaken (Verification) and validate that it has been completed correctly (Validation). Put measures in place to monitor and improve quality outcomes, promoting consistency of approach across teams. Provide supportive but assertive challenge to ensure quality standards are upheld and embedded.
• Test Engineering and Technical Practice: Apply modern test engineering practices, including source control, CI/CD pipelines and automated testing approaches. Integrate and execute tests within continuous delivery environments to enable rapid feedback loops. Demonstrate experience in planning and managing tests across multiple phases, including User Acceptance Testing and performance testing. Contribute to automation framework development and the improvement of engineering standards.
• Requirements, Data and Technical Understanding: Understand and apply requirements engineering principles to support the creation, clarification and validation of deliverables. Validate requirements to ensure solutions meet operational, business and technical needs. Demonstrate knowledge of data solutions in cloud and on premise environments, including data exploitation tooling and platforms.