Principal Test Manager in Bedford

Join us at the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) as a Principal Test Manager. The Principal Test Manager provides strategic leadership for Quality Engineering across the organisation. This role is accountable for defining, implementing, and continuously improving testing and quality practices, frameworks, and standards that ensure high‑quality software delivery across all portfolios and programmes. They embed a culture of excellence, collaboration, and engineering discipline throughout. The Principal Test Manager ensures that all testing activity, whether functional, non‑functional, automated, or exploratory, is aligned to business outcomes and delivery models. You’ll be part of a dynamic team dedicated to helping people across the UK improve their financial wellbeing.

Role Overview

In this role you will be responsible for the following:

• Strategic Leadership
  • Maintain and mature quality standards and frameworks to drive consistency, reuse, and innovation across delivery portfolios.
  • Own the Quality Engineering roadmap, covering test automation, tooling, environments, data, performance testing, accessibility, and observability.
  • Produce quality KPIs and metrics that demonstrate value and enable data‑driven decision making (e.g. defect leakage, automation coverage, cycle time).
  • Drive adoption of shift‑left and shift‑right testing, embedding testing early in CI/CD pipelines and using production insights to improve quality feedback loops.
• Governance & Assurance
  • Provide independent test assurance for high‑risk / regulated programmes.
  • Chair or contribute to Quality Gates and release readiness reviews.
  • Establish and manage vendor QA governance, ensuring external partners meet agreed SLAs, KPIs, and quality standards.
• People & Organisation
  • Own and run the Quality Engineering Community of Practice encompassing 3rd party and in‑house colleagues.
  • Build and lead a multi‑skilled test community.
  • Mentor QAs, QA Leads, Programme Test Leads, ensuring they operate to consistent standards and behaviours.
  • Promote a culture of continuous learning, experimentation, and collaboration between QA, Software Engineering, and Operational teams.
• Innovation & Tooling
  • Own and evolve the test tooling landscape.
  • Evaluate and adopt emerging tools and practices (AI‑assisted testing, contract testing, etc.).
  • Collaborate with engineering/DevOps to ensure environments, data, and test automation pipelines are reliable, scalable, and cost‑efficient.

Skills and Experience Required

Essential

• 4 years+ experience leading Quality Assurance or Quality Engineering teams.
• People leadership and line management experience.
• Able to manage a diverse group of internal and external stakeholders.
• Stay current with industry trends, landscape changes and new technologies to identify new opportunities.
• Strong team leadership and experience with working cross‑functional teams, including collaborating with peers and other community of practice leads to plan and manage delivery.

What We Offer

• Generous Annual Leave – 30 days plus Bank Holidays.
• Pension scheme – contributions matched 2 to 1 (up to 10% of your salary).
• Interest‑free loan for season tickets for buses and trains.
• Cycle to work Scheme.
• Subsidised eye tests & flu jabs.
• Life assurance scheme.
• Give as you earn scheme.
• Employee assistance programme (EAP).
• PAM Assist and PAM Life scheme (Wellbeing).
• Enhanced family and sick pay.
• Paid volunteering (2 days a year).
• Recognition Scheme.
• Discounts portal to numerous retailers.

Flexible Working

At MaPS, we take pride in our flexible approach to work. As standard, we work on a hybrid basis with a minimum of 2 days in the office per month. Hybrid working is a voluntary, non‑contractual arrangement and our headquarters in Bedford will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business needs, but personal and other relevant circumstances will also be considered. If you are successful, any opportunities for hybrid working, including whether a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for you, will be discussed with you prior to you taking up your post.