At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead quality engineering strategy and mentor teams to deliver top-notch digital services.
- Company: Join the DVSA, a forward-thinking organisation committed to quality and innovation.
- Benefits: Enjoy a competitive salary, generous leave, flexible working, and a strong pension scheme.
- Other info: Great career growth opportunities and a supportive work environment await you.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on digital services while shaping the future of quality engineering.
- Qualifications: Proven leadership in software testing and modern quality practices is essential.
Location: Swansea, Bristol, Birmingham (Garretts Green), Nottingham, Yeading (Hayes), Oldham (Chadderton), Leeds, Newcastle upon Tyne
Salary: A GBP 69,501 per annum
Vacancy Type: Permanent, Full Time or Part Time
Closing Date: Monday 29th June 2026
The Head of Quality Engineering will provide organisational leadership to foster a cohesive quality engineering strategy across the DVSA. They will build capability across the profession and delivery teams, ensuring teams are equipped to support the strategic direction and deliver high-quality digital services. This role will be responsible for leadership across a variety of quality and testing professionals within the organisation. The role holder will provide leadership, guidance, coaching and mentorship to teams to adopt and embed modern quality engineering practices that support the delivery of digital services that are critical to the DVSA.
Joining Our Department Comes With Many Benefits:
- Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your base salary.
- 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays and a privilege day for the King's birthday.
- Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.
Job Description:
The role requires a high level of strategic thinking, technical understanding, capability building, and the ability to influence organisational change, enabling teams to adopt scalable, modern approaches to quality across DVSA.
Your Responsibilities Will Include, But Aren't Limited To:
- Demonstrate leadership by providing influence, direction, and guidance to staff to support the delivery of organisational objectives.
- Define and execute a long-term quality and testing strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives, user needs and DVSA's digital strategy.
- Guide and influence testing and quality engineering practices across product teams, promoting consistent and scalable approaches to quality.
- Drive the integration of quality engineering practices at every stage of the software development lifecycle, ensuring quality is embedded from design through to delivery and operation.
- Promote the adoption of automation and scalable quality frameworks that support efficient, reliable and repeatable delivery across product teams.
- Shape and refine testing and quality engineering design principles, governance, metrics, and reporting, ensuring clear visibility of quality across DVSA services.
- Establish a strong direction and a persuasive future vision for quality engineering and digital service assurance across DVSA.
- Manage and engage with honesty and integrity, acting as a role model and upholding the reputation of the Agency, Department and Civil Service.
Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills they need. We aim to empower line managers to create teams where people can flourish and deliver excellent outcomes for the public.
Open Sessions: Would you like to find out more about the role, the team and what it's like to work in our department? If so, we are organising an open session where you can virtually meet the team on Thursday 25th June at 16:30-17:00.
Person specification Required Experience:
To be successful in this role you will need to have the following experience:
- Strong strategic leadership experience within software testing, quality engineering or digital delivery, with the ability to define and implement organisational quality strategies that support the delivery of reliable, secure and user-focused digital services.
- Demonstrable experience of modern quality engineering practices, including test automation, continuous testing, risk-based quality approaches and the integration of quality throughout the software development lifecycle.
Head of Quality Engineering in Cannock employer: TipTopJob
The DVSA is an exceptional employer, offering a supportive work culture that prioritises employee well-being and professional growth. With generous benefits such as a substantial pension contribution, flexible working options, and increasing annual leave, employees are empowered to achieve a healthy work-life balance while contributing to the delivery of critical digital services. The DVSA fosters an environment of collaboration and innovation, making it an ideal place for those looking to make a meaningful impact in quality engineering.
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We think this is how you could land Head of Quality Engineering in Cannock
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How to prepare for a job interview at TipTopJob
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For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
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Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
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