Lead Test Engineer Contract

Fimador are currently looking for a QA Team Lead to lead the evolution of test automation across a growing engineering organisation. You’ll help shape the automation roadmap, support the transition from Cypress to Playwright, and raise the quality engineering capability across multiple teams. You won’t just be building frameworks. You’ll be setting direction, creating playbooks, coaching engineers, and helping teams embed quality earlier in the software delivery lifecycle. Define and drive the test automation strategy across engineering teams, ensuring frameworks, tools, and practices are scalable, consistent, and fit for modern software delivery. Lead the migration from Cypress to Playwright, helping teams adopt best practices and build maintainable, reliable end-to-end automation. Design, build, and improve automated test frameworks across multiple layers, including API, integration, and end-to-end testing. Indirectly lead and influence a team of around 10 engineers and QAs, upskilling them in automation, quality engineering, and modern testing practices. Create practical automation playbooks, standards, and reusable guidance that help teams deliver with greater confidence and consistency. Partner closely with QA, software engineering, DevOps/SRE, and product teams to embed quality early in the development process. Act as a technical authority for automation tooling, test design, CI/CD integration, and engineering quality practices. Champion a culture where quality is shared ownership, not something left to the end of the delivery cycle. Strong experience in test automation engineering, ideally at senior, lead, staff, or principal level. Experience designing and scaling automation frameworks for complex software products. Strong knowledge of API, integration, and end-to-end testing approaches. Experience embedding automated testing into CI/CD workflows. The ability to coach, mentor, and upskill engineers and QAs without needing direct line management authority. This is a hybrid opportunity requiring 2 days on-site.