Quality Assurance Automation Lead (Up to £450pd - Outside of IR35)

This range is provided by OpenSource. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

Duration: 6 month contract (potential to extend)

Day rate: Up to £450pd outside of IR35

Role Overview

A growing SaaS company is looking for a Software Test Manager to drive the quality assurance strategy and oversee the testing process across their platform. This role requires a blend of technical expertise and leadership skills to ensure the delivery of high-quality software. The successful candidate will work closely with development and product teams to define testing priorities, implement automation strategies, and uphold industry best practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and evolve the overall QA strategy, ensuring alignment with industry best practices.
• Define and implement an Agile-driven QA process to enhance product quality and reliability.
• Establish test automation frameworks covering back-end and front-end components.
• Identify risks to software quality and prioritise testing efforts accordingly.
• Implement technical testing to validate system components, integrations, and platform configurations.
• Promote a culture of continuous testing within development teams by embedding automation into CI/CD pipelines.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including development, product management, and service teams, to improve testing coverage.
• Define and manage the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) process for individual components and the platform as a whole.
• Monitor and track quality metrics such as defect rates, test coverage, and resolution times to assess QA effectiveness.
• Provide clear reporting on testing outcomes, analyse trends, and drive improvements in QA processes.
• Ensure all releases meet high-quality standards before deployment to production.

Skills and Experience Required

• Strong leadership and communication skills, with experience mentoring QA teams.
• Proven ability to assess software risks, troubleshoot defects, and implement preventative strategies.
• Hands-on experience in designing and implementing multi-level automated testing frameworks.
• Experience working on distributed systems and testing third-party integrations.
• Ability to work closely with end-users to coordinate and support User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
• Knowledge of modern testing approaches, including containerisation for regression testing.
• Experience integrating performance testing into the development lifecycle using tools like K6 or Nbomber.
• Strong understanding of non-functional testing, including security and performance profiling.
• Hands-on experience with no-code automation tools (e.g., Reflect, Preflight) and robust frameworks like Cypress or Selenium.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies, CI/CD pipelines, and test management tools such as JIRA.
• Familiarity with cloud-based environments.
• Experience writing and executing automated tests for .NET applications and APIs.
• Understanding of monitoring and alerting tools to track system performance.
• Experience working with CosmosDB, SQL, and messaging queues.
• A security-first approach to testing solutions.

This is an exciting opportunity to take ownership of the QA strategy within a fast-paced SaaS environment, ensuring the delivery of reliable, high-quality software.