Lead QA Engineer | Permanent | Holborn

We have an exciting opportunity for a Lead QA Engineer within our digital hub in London. Would you like to help build a platform that underpins one of the UK’s most high-transactional websites? Do you love to automate testing? Would you like to work for a business that offers you exposure to the latest testing technologies? If so, then we would love to hear from you!

 Our Tech Stack:

We are proud of our tech stack – As a Lead QA Engineer you will have the opportunity to work with Java, Microservices, Selenium, Jenkins, REST-assured, SOAP UI, Postman and more…

That being said, we are always looking for new technologies that will enhance the products we build for our customers and our engineers play a big part in suggesting and shaping our technology choices.

About Whitbread:

What continues to set us apart are our excellent products and people. In Premier Inn, we have the UK’s favourite budget hotel chain, currently outperforming the market and ambitious for more as we execute our plans in both the UK and Germany. We have much loved brands such as Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Bar + Block alongside exciting up and coming propositions such as Cookhouse & Pub.

We remain true to our values and put our people at the centre of everything we do. Throughout this crisis we a proud to have supported our nations Key Workers by providing accommodation throughout the pandemic. 

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead the Automated Microservices testing in the team.
• Define the automation standards within product area, methodologies, toolsets, technologies and ultimately ways of working for the team.
• Work closely with QA Manager, Senior QA Engineers, Software Engineers and Product Managers on a daily basis to understand functional requirements and acceptance criteria to ensure the build of quality products.
• Act as the champion of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and automated testing to improve efficiencies - provides coaching/support for Senior QA Engineers.
• Supports the development of Whitbread’s standards / tools / techniques for Agile testing.
• Employs automated testing techniques, particularly to support regression testing across all product platforms.
• Keeps up to date on the latest industry trends and openly shares thoughts amongst Testing Centre of Excellence on standards / tools / technologies / trends for automated testing.
• Work closely with the scrum team, particularly DevOps and Software Engineers for CI, to ensure that quality code can be released into live on a regular cycle.
• Creation and maintenance of appropriate test environment for automation, ensuring it is constantly efficient with support from Environment and Dev team

 What you’ll need:

• Test Lead experience of line management, mentoring, coaching and HR support of a small team (2-4 people)
• Strong coding experience in Java
• Solid experience of implementing API/Microservices frameworks
• Experience with API testing tools (Postman,
• Someone what good quality code looks like (and flags refactoring required / peer reviews needed / individual’s development needs etc.)
• Strong Agile testing experience (Scrum/Kanban)
• Good experience of Continuous Integration (CI), i.e. Jenkins, Maven
• Good experience of JIRA/Confluence/Zephyr/GitHub/Slack
• Strong stakeholder management skills, particularly working closely with the Product Manager and Engineering team
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to communicate clearly and concisely, verbally and in writing

Whitbread is an inclusive employer. We believe that everyone is unique and there should be no barriers to entry and no limits to ambition. We welcome your application whatever your background or situation. Under-represented groups such as women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities & members of the LGBTQ+ community (those who identify as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans sexual, non binary or use another term), are strongly encouraged to build a career with us. We are open to part-time and flexible working and, where possible, will try to support this.