Manchester Digital
Lead Test Engineer - Department for Work and Pensions - G6

How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Location
This role may be located in one of the following locations; Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle or Sheffield.
Please find further information on the Corporate hub locations here.
Please Note
- For candidates requesting to work in Newcastle, the role will initially be based at Benton Park View. It will then move to 1 Pilgrim Place in Newcastle city centre by the end of 2027.
- For candidates requesting to work in Sheffield King’s Court, please note these roles will initially be based at King’s Court and then move to 1 West Bar by early 2028.
- As part of the role, you may be required to travel regularly to the other digital hubs. The frequency of this will be discussed further should you be successful.
About The Job
Job summary
Do you want to shape the quality of services that support millions of citizens?
Ready to lead testing across large scale digital transformation programmes while developing and supporting a high performing engineering community?
If so, come and join us as a Lead Test Engineer.
Debt Solutions is responsible for DWP's Debt Management, Compensation Recovery and Debt Management Information Systems. These critical services are used by thousands of colleagues and customers, helping to recover around £3 billion in debt each year while supporting and protecting some of the most vulnerable people in society.
We're delivering ambitious transformation programmes to replace legacy debt management platforms with modern, cloud first technologies and commercial off the shelf solutions, while continuing to operate and enhance our existing mission critical services.
Reasons to use Rodeo
I’m in my final year doing Economics and I don’t know whether to apply for grad schemes now or do a masters first. What do you think?
Honest answer — it depends on where you want to end up. A lot of top grad schemes (Big 4, civil service, banking) don’t need a masters. Let’s look at the ones you’d be competitive for now, and we can decide if a masters actually adds anything.
Also worth knowing: most autumn 2026 applications are open now. Timing matters more than you think.
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
Graduate Consultant — 2026 Scheme
Why you're a good match
StrongYour economics background and your summer at a regional bank line up with what PwC looks for on the consulting scheme. Applications close in four weeks.
See breakdownIt searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Why you're a good match
You’ve got the grades and the economics background, and your bank internship is exactly the experience this scheme looks for. Apply soon — deadlines close within the month.
Experience fit
Your summer at the bank plus your econometrics coursework map directly to the day-one responsibilities on this scheme — client modelling, market briefings, and deal support.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
You will provide strategic leadership for testing across the entire Debt Solutions portfolio. Leading a community of around 25 Test and QA Engineers, supported by Senior Test Engineers, you will define and implement testing strategies, promote best practice, and drive quality across multidisciplinary delivery teams.
You'll play a key role in ensuring the reliability, performance and quality of products and digital services that deliver real value to citizens, while helping to shape the future direction of test engineering within Debt Solutions.
Job Description
- Work with, influence and drive collaboration with key stakeholders and technical decision makers across disciplines to define a strategic testing/quality vision and influence products and services.
- Enable the identification of skills gaps within the team, capability building and support recruitment and retaining of talent into the organisation within Debt Solutions.
- Drive adoption of risk and context based approaches to Agile and Waterfall testing techniques, principles, and tools.
- Ensure that usability, accessibility, security, stability, performance and quality is embedded in the development of our services, in a consistent and standardised way.
- Lead the team to build appropriate engineered repeatable tests and contribute to the value automation adds to quality solutions.
- Promote engagement with continuous integration, delivery and deployment practices following standards and tooling methodologies.
- Proactively share knowledge, solutions, tooling and support our internal communities along with mentoring, coaching, and supporting your peers and line manage Senior Test Engineers.
- Work with our technology stack which includes commercial-off-the-shelf products (e.g. DM6 debt system), Java/node.js microservices, Postgres/MongoDB databases, Azure cloud infrastructure, Gitlab CI/CD pipelines, PowerBI/Business Objects.


Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Person specification
When Completing Your CV, Please Provide Clear Evidence Of Your Extensive Experience, Strategic Leadership And Measurable Achievements Against The Essential Criteria Listed Below
- Lead Criterion - Leading and proactively owning test/quality strategies across multiple teams and tech stacks and types such as Microservices, API’s, GUI’s, CoTs and message brokers.
- Proactively defining and embedding Test Engineering practices in Java especially around BDD.
- Leading and enabling non-functional testing approaches (e.g. accessibility, performance, security, usability), including test types, tools and appropriate standards.
- Driving and implementing of shifting testing earlier, including CI/CD, and use of automated pipelines within cloud infrastructure.
- Leading, developing and line managing agile and diverse teams of embedded test Engineers, promoting skills development, good practices and continuous improvement.
- Providing technical leadership across the full software development lifecycle, from understanding business needs to delivery into production. Delivering technical leadership and managing risk, issues, defects, reporting progress.
If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact Richard.hanley@dwp.gov.uk.
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London