Lead Test Automation Engineer – Hybrid (Glasgow)

At Motorola Solutions, we believe that everything starts with our people. We’re a global close-knit community, united by the relentless pursuit to help keep people safer everywhere. We build and connect technologies to help protect people, property and places. Our solutions foster the collaboration that’s critical for safer communities, safer schools, safer hospitals, safer businesses, and ultimately, safer nations. Connect with a career that matters, and help us build a safer future.

Our Pronto Deployment team provides mission critical software to UK emergency service agencies, with our primary focus being the Pronto Digital Policing app. Pronto is the most popular mobile policing application in the UK, trusted by over half of the UK’s 45 police forces - and used by around 75,000 police officers on a daily basis. Pronto has been designed with and for front line operational users. As a result, it is an intuitive solution, with positive adoption, excellent user compliance and consistently positive feedback. Based in the West End of Glasgow, we currently have around 100 employees. Our team started as Kelvin Connect in 2002, a spin-out company from the University of Glasgow. Now, as part of Motorola Solutions, we continue to expand with future opportunities in the UK and beyond.

We are seeking an experienced and proactive Test Automation Lead to take ownership of our automated testing strategy. Candidates should have experience in leading a team of automation engineers and be capable of developing automated test solutions for the Pronto platform whilst guiding fellow testers to roll these solutions out across the department. You will be responsible for helping to convert our manual test cases into reliable automated scripts; primarily focusing on regression testing; to ensure product stability with every release. Beyond standard QA, you will also identify "other viable processes"—looking for opportunities to automate repetitive workflows and data setup tasks to increase overall engineering efficiency. You will work closely with the test manager, test engineers & developers to integrate automation into our everyday processes and ensure high-quality delivery. This role offers flexible, hybrid working with an expectancy to attend the Glasgow office several times per month, where applicable.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

• Be capable of developing, maintaining, and scaling a robust test automation framework, using tools like Cypress / Playwright, for the Pronto Platform and rolling it out across the department.
• Oversee the automation of the regression testing suite, ensuring that critical paths are covered and that new features do not break existing functionality.
• Work with manual testers to identify processes outside of standard testing (such as test data generation, environment setup, or reporting) that are viable for automation and implement solutions, thus reducing the amount of manual testing required by Pronto delivery teams, whilst still ensuring high levels of coverage.
• Analyse test results, identify defects, document them clearly in DevOps/GitHub and work with developers to verify fixes.
• Participate in sprint planning and daily stand-ups to provide testing estimates and flag potential quality risks early in the development cycle.
• Identify any new tools and technologies that may improve quality.

Academic & Technical Requirements:

• Excellent communication skills both written and verbal.
• Knowledge of Agile methodologies.
• A formal qualification (Degree) in Computing Science or equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of experience in QA Automation.
• Software Development in Test (SDET) qualification preferable.
• Experience of converting manual test cases into automated scripts.
• Experience of Java or another OO language.
• Knowledge of software development / issue tracking systems (e.g. Jira, MS DevOps etc.).
• Experience of XML and XSLT.
• Experience with web service technologies (e.g. SOAP, REST, JSON etc).
• Solid understanding of SQL and database queries for test data verification.
• Knowledge of source code management technologies (e.g. SubVersion, GIT etc.).
• Experience with Smartphone testing (primarily Android).
• Experience of SQL.

Soft Skills:

• Have an analytical mindset, where you look at a manual process and immediately start thinking about how to script it.
• Have the ability to explain technical bugs to non-technical stakeholders clearly.
• You take pride in the quality of the release and are not afraid to block a deployment release if quality standards aren't met.
• Confident to speak up when projects are producing sub-standard output.
• Can communicate with core software development team to understand solution behaviour.
• Can communicate with Pronto delivery teams to understand quality issues and improve where required.
• Have a critical eye for detail, that challenges the status quo.
• Capable of delivering critical feedback without damaging relationships.

Why Join Us?

• Competitive salary and bonus schemes.
• Two weeks additional pay per year (holiday bonus).
• 25 days holiday entitlement + bank holidays.
• Attractive defined contribution pension scheme.
• Employee stock purchase plan.
• Flexible working options.
• Private medical care.
• Life assurance.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay.
• Career development support and wide ranging learning opportunities.
• Employee health and wellbeing support EAP, wellbeing guidance etc.
• Carbon neutral initiatives/goals.
• Corporate social responsibility initiatives including support for volunteering.
• Well-known companies discount scheme.