Automation Test Engineer (Payments) in Sheffield

Role purpose: Design, build, and maintain automated test solutions for payments platforms to improve release confidence, reduce regression effort, and ensure high-quality delivery across critical payment processing journeys. You will combine strong Java-based automation skills with solid payments domain knowledge to create meaningful, reliable automated coverage aligned to real-world processing and controls.

Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain automated test frameworks and suites using Java and appropriate automation tools (UI, API, and integration layers).
• Translate functional payment requirements into automated test cases, ensuring coverage of end-to-end flows and edge cases.
• Automate testing for payment types and components such as credit transfers, direct debits, SWIFT/ISO 20022 messages, payment gateways, validation, routing, and posting (scope depends on platform).
• Create robust API and service-level automation (e.g., REST/SOAP), including contract and schema validation where relevant.
• Validate payment processing rules: cut-off times, value dates, charges/fees, FX (if applicable), limits, sanctions/AML screening touchpoints, returns/recalls, reversals, rejects/repairs, and exception handling.
• Implement test data strategies for payments (synthetic data, masking, data seeding), including correlation of transactions across systems.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines; enable unattended execution, reporting, and quality gates.
• Analyse failures quickly (logs, message traces, database queries where permitted) and raise high-quality defects with clear evidence.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Developers, BAs, and Ops to define acceptance criteria, test approach, and release readiness.
• Maintain test documentation: automation coverage, traceability, and execution dashboards/metrics.

Required skills & experience:

• Automation & engineering: Strong hands-on experience building automation in Java (clean code, OOP, design patterns). Experience with common automation tools/frameworks such as: JUnit/TestNG, Cucumber/BDD (optional), Selenium/Playwright (UI, where applicable), REST Assured, Postman/Newman, SoapUI (API), Maven/Gradle, Git, Jenkins/GitLab CI/Azure DevOps. Understanding of test automation best practices: maintainability, flakiness reduction, parallel execution, environment resilience. Familiarity with observability and diagnostics: logs, tracing, monitoring tools (e.g., Splunk/ELK), and basic SQL.
• Payments domain: Working knowledge of payment processing concepts and life cycles: initiation - validation - enrichment - screening - routing - settlement - reconciliation/returns. Familiarity with payment standards and formats (as relevant): ISO 20022, SWIFT MT/MX, local clearing formats. Understanding of operational and risk considerations: sanctions screening touchpoints, auditability, resiliency, and high availability expectations.

Nice-to-have:

• Performance testing exposure (e.g., JMeter/Gatling) for payment throughput and latency.
• Containerisation and test environment tooling (Docker, Kubernetes basics).
• Experience testing event-driven architectures (Kafka) and asynchronous processing patterns.
• Experience with test data management tools.
• Knowledge of reconciliation, ledger posting, and downstream reporting impacts.

Typical deliverables:

• Java-based automation framework and reusable libraries (API + integration focus).
• Automated regression pack covering critical payment journeys and exception paths.
• CI/CD integrated execution with clear reporting (e.g., Allure/Extent reports).
• Traceability from requirements to automated tests and coverage metrics.

Behavioural expectations:

• Strong ownership mindset: prioritises stability and reliability of automated suites.
• Collaborative and clear communicator across engineering and business stakeholders.
• Pragmatic approach: automates the right things first (high risk/high value), not automation for automation's sake.