Senior QAT; Quality Assurance Tester

Newcastle, United Kingdom | Posted on 16/10/2026

Scrumconnect Consulting is a multi-award-winning UK public sector digital consultancy, positively influencing the lives of over forty million UK citizens. We bring deep expertise in agile delivery, digital transformation, and platform engineering across central government. With a team of over one hundred and twenty-five professionals — more than forty percent of whom are women — we are committed to building inclusive, diverse teams that reflect the communities we serve.

We are seeking an experienced Senior Quality Assurance Tester to lead testing strategy and execution for a Generative AI platform for a UK government department. This role goes beyond traditional functional QA. It includes evaluating AI output quality (answer accuracy, retrieval relevance, hallucination rate) alongside conventional API, integration and non-functional testing.

Define and own the test strategy across functional, non-functional and AI-specific quality dimensions (answer quality, retrieval accuracy, hallucination rate), covering RAG pipelines, prompt templates and Agentic workflows.

Design and run structured evaluations of LLM outputs, working with engineering to track answer quality and hallucination rate over time, and flag regressions before release.

Carry out manual and automated API testing (for example with REST Assured or similar tools) across the application logic that connects RAG pipelines to legacy and multi-cloud systems.

Build and maintain automated test suites integrated into CI/CD pipelines (for example Git Lab or Jenkins), enabling shift-left testing across the delivery lifecycle.

Carry out performance testing (for example k6, Gatling or JMeter) and accessibility testing, so the platform is robust, responsive and inclusive under real government usage conditions.

Test that guardrails and human-in-the-loop checkpoints defined by policy and technical leads work correctly and consistently. This is a verification role, not a policy-setting one.

Engaging with Product, Engineering and Policy stakeholders to embed testing throughout the sprint rather than treating it as a final gate.

Make sure testing and release evidence aligns with the  Service Standard and departmental governance, supporting evidence-gathering for service assessments where required.

Contribute test plans, evaluation frameworks and results to "Docs-as-Code" artefacts supporting the OKUA knowledge-transfer framework, so internal government engineers can understand how quality was assured.

• Experience in a modern programming language (preferably Java or Python), version control and coding standards
• Experience in manual API testing and tools
• Experience building and maintaining API automation testing, preferably with REST Assured or similar tools
• Adaptable team player, experienced in shift-left principles, including CI/CD tools such as Git Lab, Jenkins or similar
• Experience conducting non-functional testing, including performance (k6, Gatling, JMeter or similar) and/or accessibility testing
• Experience working in an agile environment, with demonstrated testing activities and engagement with multiple stakeholders
• Comfortable working in secure, regulated environments and handling sensitive data appropriately
• Experience evaluating LLM or AI output quality (hallucination detection, answer relevance scoring, retrieval accuracy)
• Experience delivering digital services within UK central government or the wider public sector
• Familiarity with  Service Standard expectations and service assessment processes
• Exposure to open-source LLM tooling or evaluation frameworks
• Familiarity with AI/ML tooling on AWS, Azure or GCP

At Scrumconnect Consulting, we believe that diversity drives innovation. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where every individual is respected, valued, and supported. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds and experiences, and we actively encourage applications from women, people with disabilities, underrepresented communities, and those seeking flexible working arrangements.