Head Of Quality Engineering

November 6, 2026

Hybrid

Head

London, United Kingdom

Indeed

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Mandatory office attendance
3 days per week

Description

Head of Quality Engineering owning software quality, application security, and production observability across all digital platforms, reporting to the CTO. The role builds enterprise automation-first quality gates, drives Shift-Left practices, leads AppSec in the delivery pipeline, and partners with SRE on observability. It also directs the global Quality Engineering organization across London and offshore centers.

Responsibilities

Formulate and execute the enterprise Quality Engineering strategy, establishing automation-first quality gates across all delivery pods
Drive the widespread adoption of Shift-Left engineering practices, including Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), and automated contract testing
Establish clear quality criteria and release gates, making quality a shared accountability between developers, tech leads, and QA engineers
Build and scale a centralized SDET and automation framework capability, supporting web, API, mobile, and data platform testing
Direct automation across functional, integration, regression, and non-functional domains (performance, load, accessibility, resilience)
Introduce AI-assisted test design, synthetic data generation, and automated regression suite maintenance into testing workflows
Lead the Application Security (AppSec) program within the engineering lifecycle, embedding automated SAST, DAST, SCA, and container security into CI/CD pipelines
Establish secure coding standards, threat modeling practices, and vulnerability remediation workflows in developer pods
Partner with corporate InfoSec and SOC teams led by the CISO, defining a clear operational handoff between in-pipeline code security and enterprise security operations
Define and report on comprehensive quality metrics, including defect leakage rates, test automation coverage, vulnerability aging, and MTTR
Lead, mentor, and build the global Quality Engineering organization across London and offshore engineering centers
Drive continuous vendor oversight, ensuring third-party delivery partners adhere to quality and security standards

Requirements

Minimum 7 years of progressive experience in software engineering, test automation, AppSec, and quality leadership
At least 2 years leading quality engineering or DevSecOps organizations in complex, distributed cloud enterprise environments
Demonstrated track record implementing Shift-Left testing, CI/CD security automation, and enterprise observability frameworks
Deep expertise in modern test automation frameworks (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Rest Assured) and CI/CD quality integration
Strong technical mastery of Application Security practices, OWASP Top 10, pipeline scanning tools (Snyk, SonarQube, Veracode), and container security
Thorough understanding of cloud-native architectures on AWS, microservices, and modern API testing
High diplomatic and persuasive skill in balancing release pace with quality and security rigor
Clear communication of technical debt and quality risk to executive business stakeholders

Conditions

Hybrid working: 3 days in the office
Competitive salary and incentive scheme
Birthday holiday and option to purchase additional annual leave
Comprehensive Benefits Package: Private Pension, Private Medical Insurance, Life Assurance and more