Public Sector Resourcing
Senior Test Engineer
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On behalf of DWP we are looking for a Senior Test Engineer for a 9 month (Inside IR35) contract. Hybrid working with 3 days per week in either Birmingham Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield or Newcastle.
About the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.
Working with DWP, you will be helping us to drive our priorities to:
- Help people to move into work and support those already in work to progress, with the aim of increasing overall workforce participation
- Help people to plan and save for later life, while providing a safety net for those who need it now
- Provide effective, efficient, and innovative services to the millions of claimants who rely on us every day, including the most vulnerable in society
- Improve experience of our services while maximising value for money for the taxpayer.
DWP is building a centralized Management Information (MI) platform to aggregate, transform, and securely deliver enterprise data from legacy on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. As a Senior Test Engineer, you will lead the strategic quality assurance framework for this mission-critical ecosystem. You will spearhead testing across hybrid environments, ranging from on-premises Oracle and Informatica data warehouses to near to real-time, cloud-hosted AWS streaming pipelines.
Responsibilities
As a Senior Test Engineer your main responsibilities will be:
- Strategic Test Leadership: Define and implement risk-based, shift-left testing strategies that align with business priorities, technical architecture, and strict delivery timelines.
- Pipeline Automation & Engineering: Build, maintain, and execute end-to-end testing frameworks within GitLab CI/CD pipelines to guarantee delivery confidence.
- Comprehensive Quality Assurance: Direct multi-layered testing initiatives covering infrastructure automation, end-to-end data pipelines, data quality, and rapid smoke testing.
- Security & Verification Compliance: Validate robust data encryption/decryption routines, SFTP transfer integrity, and secure certificate storage configurations using HashiCorp Vault.
- Stakeholder & Supplier Engagement: Collaborate closely with Product, Business, and delivery teams, while managing testing governance across internal squads and external supplier organisations.
- Mentorship & Innovation: Coach and mentor test engineers across programmes, driving continuous improvement and exploring cutting-edge testing toolsets.
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Essential Requirements
- An active SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be willing & eligible to undergo checks. (Please note, due to the exceptional requirements of this position (short-term nature of this role and speed at which we require a postholder in situ) preference may be given to candidates who meet all of the essential criteria and hold active security clearance.)
- Hands-on proficiency with Python, PySpark, SQL, and PL/SQL for data validation and test automation scripts.
- Experience testing hybrid architectures, including Oracle data warehouses, Informatica workflows, Apache Kafka, and AWS EMR.
- Practical understanding of cloud security protocols, including OAuth/Cognito authentication, cryptographic keys, and HashiCorp Vault.
- Competency in utilising operational observability tools like AWS CloudWatch to track data pipeline performance and anomalies.
- A hands-on, authoritative QA leader with a platform-engineering mindset who confidently guides technical teams and influences architectural choices.
- Highly structured problem solver who relies on data, metrics, and risk-based decision-making to balance delivery speed with platform stability.
- Skilled at translating complex, low-level technical or data issues into clear, actionable insights for senior business and product stakeholders.
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Desirable Requirements
- Experience verifying data accuracy, semantic model freshness, and downstream presentation directly within Power BI dashboards.
- Familiarity with verifying the performance and security boundary parameters of Microsoft Data Gateways.
- Exposure to evaluating or implementing AI-assisted testing solutions to optimise pipeline delivery velocity.
- Public Sector experience.
Additional Information
Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.
Disability Confident
As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.
Armed Forces Covenant
DWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.
Off Payroll Working
In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different".
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