Head of Test in Ruddington

At MHR, our employees are central to our success and play a key role in helping customers achieve sustainable high performance. With a team of over 900 professionals, we work to make things flow smoothly, whether it's for large organisations or individual employees. By focusing on the core needs of efficiency, productivity, growth, and impact, our employees use their expertise to deliver real solutions through our People and Finance platform. This system, which covers finance, HR, payroll, and learning, helps businesses run more smoothly and make better decisions in real time. With over 40 years of experience behind us, MHR’s track record as a high-performance organisation is built on clear goals, a shared vision, and strong communication – all of which we pass on to our customers.

This is a senior leadership opportunity to define and deliver the quality engineering vision for one of MHR’s most critical platforms. You’ll own the end‑to‑end testing strategy across People First, embedding automation‑first and AI‑enabled practices throughout the SDLC. Working closely with Engineering, Product, and Architecture, you’ll ensure quality is built in, not tested in, while shaping the use of tooling, CI/CD, observability, and metrics to drive continuous improvement and delivery predictability. You’ll have the autonomy and influence to establish a best‑in‑class quality engineering function within a modern SaaS environment.

You’ll lead and develop a high‑performing Quality Engineering function, working in close partnership with Engineering Managers, Team Leads, and Product stakeholders. You’ll coach and inspire Automation Engineers and QA specialists, fostering a culture of ownership and continuous improvement, while ensuring teams are equipped with the right tools and capabilities. You’ll also drive adoption of AI‑assisted testing approaches and provide oversight of third‑party partners, acting as a strong advocate for quality across the organisation.

You’ll be accountable for ensuring all software released within People First meets the highest standards of quality, reliability, and performance. You’ll deliver an automation‑led testing strategy, embed continuous testing within CI/CD, and leverage AI to improve coverage, efficiency, and early risk detection. Alongside this, you’ll establish clear quality metrics and governance, ensure robust non‑functional testing, and drive predictable, high‑quality delivery in partnership with Engineering and Product. Ultimately, you’ll ensure People First remains scalable, resilient, and trusted by customers, while enabling teams to move faster with confidence.

What We’re Looking For

• Proven experience leading testing / quality engineering functions at scale, ideally in SaaS or product‑led environments
• Strong background in modern automated testing strategies and tools
• Experience embedding quality into Agile / DevOps environments and CI/CD pipelines
• Deep understanding of quality engineering for complex distributed systems
• Experience with Microsoft Azure environments and cloud‑native architectures
• Demonstrated ability to lead, coach, and grow high‑performing teams
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills
• Experience driving continuous improvement, standards, and engineering maturity
• Exposure to AI‑driven development or testing practices

Benefits To Support You Personally And Professionally

• Access to over 60 internal training courses, professional qualifications, and cross‑departmental mentoring and coaching programs
• 24/7 access to a GP through Help at Hand for you and your family, confidential mental health support, and paid sick leave
• Ability to purchase or sell additional holiday days beyond 25 days and bank holidays
• Enhanced Family leave
• My MHRewards offering discounts at over 900 retailers
• Monthly employee recognition program and departmental awards
• Referral bonus scheme of up to £2,000
• Employee‑led social events such as running clubs, football teams, book clubs, and bake‑offs
• On‑site subsidised restaurants offering a variety of fresh meals daily
• Opt‑in benefits schemes such as private medical insurance and dental coverage