Are you a senior Quality Engineering professional who wants to shape how an entire engineering organisation builds, tests and delivers software?

We're looking for a Principal Engineer specialising in Quality Engineering to define and drive quality strategy across a growing portfolio of products and platforms. This is a newly created, high-impact role where you'll work closely with senior engineering leadership to improve engineering standards, strengthen delivery confidence and ensure quality keeps pace with an increasingly AI-driven development environment.

Combining technical leadership, architectural thinking and hands-on engineering, you'll influence how more than ten engineering teams approach quality, while building the tools, frameworks and guardrails that enable them to deliver reliable software at scale.

The RoleYou'll take ownership of the technical direction for Quality Engineering across multiple products and platforms, ensuring quality is embedded throughout the software development lifecycle rather than treated as a final checkpoint before release.

Working alongside senior engineering leaders, Staff Engineers, Technical Leads and Product teams, you'll establish practical standards, demonstrate best practice through working implementations and drive adoption across the organisation.

With AI and agentic development creating opportunities to deliver software faster, you'll also help define how testing, assurance and evaluation evolve to maintain reliability, manage risk and protect customer outcomes.

This is a senior individual contributor position, offering significant influence over engineering strategy without the responsibility of managing a team.

• What You'll Be DoingDefine and evolve the Quality Engineering strategy across multiple products, platforms and engineering teams.
• Establish quality standards, architectural principles and practical guardrails that engineers can implement within their own teams.
• Improve testability, observability and recoverability across CI/CD pipelines and progressive delivery processes.
• Design and develop shared regression suites, smoke testing capabilities and reusable quality tooling.
• Build quality agents and agentic testing capabilities to help teams adopt effective testing practices at scale.
• Develop approaches for evaluating AI-powered features and agents, including evaluation frameworks, red-team testing and drift detection.
• Take hands-on responsibility for complex or high-risk engineering changes where additional assurance is needed.
• Work with Product, Customer Support and Customer Success to connect engineering quality with customer experience and business outcomes.
• Coach and influence Technical Leaders and other Software Engineers, embedding sustainable quality practices across the organisation.
• Investigate systemic quality issues and define the technical improvements needed to prevent them from recurring.

• Essential ExperienceProven experience setting Quality Engineering strategy across an entire engineering function, rather than within a single team or product.
• Strong architectural understanding of testability, observability, recoverability, CI/CD and progressive delivery.
• Demonstrable success changing engineering practices through hands-on examples, reference implementations and coaching.
• Strong practical engineering capability, with experience working directly in codebases, pipelines and shared tooling.
• Experience designing and improving shared regression suites, smoke tests and testing infrastructure across multiple teams.
• A risk-based approach to assurance, using delivery, incident, customer or commercial data to guide decisions.
• Experience influencing senior engineering stakeholders and driving adoption across teams without direct line-management authority.
• Practical experience with technologies such as PHP or Python, Playwright, GitHub Actions, AWS and feature flagging, or close equivalents.

• Desirable ExperienceExperience developing quality agents or reusable AI-driven engineering capabilities.
• Practical exposure to testing AI-powered features or agents, including evaluation frameworks, red teaming and drift detection.
• Experience within a SaaS or product-led technology business.
• Familiarity with PHP, Symfony, Docker and AWS.
• Experience improving engineering practices within a rapidly growing organisation.
• Experience extending quality standards into Product, Customer Support, Customer Success or other business functions.

• About YouYou're a credible technical leader who can move comfortably between strategic discussions and hands-on engineering. You influence through technical expertise, evidence and practical delivery rather than relying on authority or process alone.You're commercially aware, understand the relationship between quality, delivery speed, cost and customer outcomes, and can bring people with you when challenging established ways of working.Above all, you see quality as an engineering responsibility that runs throughout the development lifecycle. You enjoy enabling others to deliver better software and measure success by the improvements adopted across an organisation, not simply by the tests you write yourself.

Job Description

Build quality people can trust.

At AJ Bell, we believe investing should feel good. For our customers, that means being able to rely on technology that is secure, resilient and easy to use when they're managing their financial futures.

As a Senior Software Test Engineer, you'll play a key role in making that confidence possible. You'll test the applications, processes and integrations behind our customer experience, helping us deliver software that works as it should and continues to perform as our products evolve.

You'll work across UI, API, back-office workflows, third-party systems and the integrations between them, including end-to-end testing. You'll combine hands-on testing expertise with an automation-first approach, helping development teams identify risks early and deliver resilient, performant solutions.

You'll also have an important role within the testing team, coaching and supporting other testers, reviewing their work and helping the Team Lead balance workloads and priorities.

This is an opportunity to work on products that will help shape how people invest for their future financial wellbeing. You'll be part of a focused application development team where success is measured not just by the features we deliver, but by the value and quality we create for our customers.

What You'll Do

Protect the quality of the customer experience

• Carry out testing across UI, API, back-office workflow processes, third-party systems and integrations, including end-to-end testing.
• Understand and interpret business, functional and technical requirements.
• Understand AJ Bell's products and processes, along with relevant Financial Services legislation.
• Use your testing expertise to influence how solutions are developed and delivered, helping teams achieve the best possible outcome for customers.
• Execute test scripts and record results using software testing tools such as JIRA and Xray.
• Raise defects promptly, providing clear and sufficient detail to support investigation and resolution.
• Support User Acceptance Testing and releases into Production.
• Apply an understanding of Agile working practices throughout delivery.
• 
  

Build testing into delivery

• Work alongside Technical Leads and other Testers from project inception to create and implement appropriate test automation approaches.
• Balance automation and manual testing to provide effective coverage and confidence in releases.
• Take an automation-first approach wherever it adds value.
• Carry out exploratory testing within an Agile development environment.
• Develop test tools and extend test frameworks and test environments.
• Support new research projects and proof of concepts, helping us explore better ways to build and test our products.
• 
  

Support And Develop Other Testers

• Coach and support testers within the team, sharing knowledge and helping others develop their skills.
• Review testing work through peer reviews and provide constructive feedback.
• Delegate work and set tasks, targets and objectives when required.
• Act as a first point of contact for testers who need technical or testing support.
• Work closely with the Team Lead to balance workflow, priorities and delivery.
• 
  

Help us keep improving

• Bring your knowledge and experience to discussions about how we build and test software.
• Identify opportunities to improve testing approaches, automation, tooling and environments.
• Work collaboratively with developers, Technical Leads and other stakeholders to identify risks and solve problems early.
• Contribute to a culture where quality is everyone's responsibility.
• 
  

About you{{:}}

We don't expect you to have experience with every technology we use. What's important is that you're an experienced tester with strong technical foundations, a desire to keep learning and the confidence to share your expertise with others.

Experience

• Experience of working as a Senior Tester and delegating work to other testers within the team and being a first point of contact if they require help or assistance.
• Full understanding of the testing lifecycle & methodologies
• Create and design automated test scripts using the BDD methodology
• Maintain and enhance the existing automation frameworks
• Carry out exploratory testing within an Agile development environment
• Develop test tools, and extend test frameworks and test environments
• Proven experience testing APIs using integration tools
• 
  

Technical knowledge

• Knowledge of Cypress, Gherkin, Page Object Model, PactumJS and TypeScript.
• Strong understanding of the processes and systems under test, including the ability to test individual components and related processes.
• A good understanding of test automation concepts and their practical application.
• An automation-first approach to test execution where appropriate.
• Experience with software testing tools such as JIRA and Xray.
• 
  

How You'll Work

• Meticulous attention to detail and a strong focus on quality.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical colleagues.
• A collaborative approach and willingness to share knowledge.
• The confidence to challenge, influence and contribute to technical discussions.
• A proactive approach to identifying risks and finding practical solutions.

A genuine desire to learn, adapt and improve how we test and deliver software.

Are you a senior Quality Engineering professional who wants to shape how an entire engineering organisation builds, tests and delivers software?

We're looking for a Principal Engineer specialising in Quality Engineering to define and drive quality strategy across a growing portfolio of products and platforms. This is a newly created, high-impact role where you'll work closely with senior engineering leadership to improve engineering standards, strengthen delivery confidence and ensure quality keeps pace with an increasingly AI-driven development environment.

Combining technical leadership, architectural thinking and hands-on engineering, you'll influence how more than ten engineering teams approach quality, while building the tools, frameworks and guardrails that enable them to deliver reliable software at scale.

The RoleYou'll take ownership of the technical direction for Quality Engineering across multiple products and platforms, ensuring quality is embedded throughout the software development lifecycle rather than treated as a final checkpoint before release.

Working alongside senior engineering leaders, Staff Engineers, Technical Leads and Product teams, you'll establish practical standards, demonstrate best practice through working implementations and drive adoption across the organisation.

With AI and agentic development creating opportunities to deliver software faster, you'll also help define how testing, assurance and evaluation evolve to maintain reliability, manage risk and protect customer outcomes.

This is a senior individual contributor position, offering significant influence over engineering strategy without the responsibility of managing a team.

• What You'll Be DoingDefine and evolve the Quality Engineering strategy across multiple products, platforms and engineering teams.
• Establish quality standards, architectural principles and practical guardrails that engineers can implement within their own teams.
• Improve testability, observability and recoverability across CI/CD pipelines and progressive delivery processes.
• Design and develop shared regression suites, smoke testing capabilities and reusable quality tooling.
• Build quality agents and agentic testing capabilities to help teams adopt effective testing practices at scale.
• Develop approaches for evaluating AI-powered features and agents, including evaluation frameworks, red-team testing and drift detection.
• Take hands-on responsibility for complex or high-risk engineering changes where additional assurance is needed.
• Work with Product, Customer Support and Customer Success to connect engineering quality with customer experience and business outcomes.
• Coach and influence Technical Leaders and other Software Engineers, embedding sustainable quality practices across the organisation.
• Investigate systemic quality issues and define the technical improvements needed to prevent them from recurring.

• Essential ExperienceProven experience setting Quality Engineering strategy across an entire engineering function, rather than within a single team or product.
• Strong architectural understanding of testability, observability, recoverability, CI/CD and progressive delivery.
• Demonstrable success changing engineering practices through hands-on examples, reference implementations and coaching.
• Strong practical engineering capability, with experience working directly in codebases, pipelines and shared tooling.
• Experience designing and improving shared regression suites, smoke tests and testing infrastructure across multiple teams.
• A risk-based approach to assurance, using delivery, incident, customer or commercial data to guide decisions.
• Experience influencing senior engineering stakeholders and driving adoption across teams without direct line-management authority.
• Practical experience with technologies such as PHP or Python, Playwright, GitHub Actions, AWS and feature flagging, or close equivalents.

• Desirable ExperienceExperience developing quality agents or reusable AI-driven engineering capabilities.
• Practical exposure to testing AI-powered features or agents, including evaluation frameworks, red teaming and drift detection.
• Experience within a SaaS or product-led technology business.
• Familiarity with PHP, Symfony, Docker and AWS.
• Experience improving engineering practices within a rapidly growing organisation.
• Experience extending quality standards into Product, Customer Support, Customer Success or other business functions.

• About YouYou're a credible technical leader who can move comfortably between strategic discussions and hands-on engineering. You influence through technical expertise, evidence and practical delivery rather than relying on authority or process alone.You're commercially aware, understand the relationship between quality, delivery speed, cost and customer outcomes, and can bring people with you when challenging established ways of working.Above all, you see quality as an engineering responsibility that runs throughout the development lifecycle. You enjoy enabling others to deliver better software and measure success by the improvements adopted across an organisation, not simply by the tests you write yourself.