Staff QA Engineer

Staff QA Engineer

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: London

Reporting To: Head of QA Engineering

Compensation: GBP 75,000 - GBP 80,000 / year

Reward Gateway, part of Edenred, is a global leader in benefits and employee engagement. We help businesses attract, engage, and retain top talent through strategic reward, recognition, and well‑being solutions.

Guided by our shared missions - 'Making the World a Better Place to Work' and 'Enriching Connections, For Good' - we're committed to transforming workplaces and improving people's daily lives.

Our team embodies entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, and respect. We push boundaries, speak up, and stay human, fostering a culture where imagination thrives.

The Staff QA Engineer is a senior individual contributor within the QA COE, reporting directly to the Head of QA. This role combines deep technical quality engineering expertise with QA management responsibility for large strategic programmes.

This role operates at the intersection of hands‑on quality engineering and programme‑level quality governance - setting standards across squads, leading test strategy for strategic initiatives, and driving quality culture across the engineering organisation.

This is not a people management role. It is a technical lead role with programme testing governance accountability. You will largely focus on:

Driving quality engineering standards, automation strategy, and testing best practices across the allocated engineering squads. Acting as the technical lead on test architecture, tooling decisions, and shift‑left implementation.

Providing dedicated QA management and governance for strategic change programmes. Owning the test strategy, quality gates, go/no‑go sign‑off authority, and risk escalation for each programme.

• A flexible holiday plan of up to 40 days per year
• GBP 400 a year Wellbeing Allowance
• Private Medical Insurance
• Allowance for professional development books, E-books, and podcasts
• Contributory pension scheme
• Employee, friends and family discounts across 1200+ retail, hospitality and lifestyle brands

Collaboration, connection as a team, and strong internal relationships are part of the "RG Magic" that makes our culture thrive. Our team works from our Dean Street office two days per week.

• Track and maintain the Definition of Readiness (DoR) quality criteria across all squads, ensuring quality is embedded before development begins.
• Review and improve the test pyramid per squad - driving the rebalance toward meaningful unit, integration, and E2E coverage (target: 60-20-20).
• Lead test strategy reviews for critical coverage areas.
• Own the automation strategy for allocated Technical domains.
• Drive API integration testing strategy framework standardisation.
• Be a key contributor in QA Community of Practice - monthly sessions sharing best practices, shift‑left learnings, and tooling updates.
• Conduct quarterly testing efficiency audits across squads - identify coverage gaps, flaky test patterns, and automation opportunities.
• Contribute to the AI‑driven QE roadmap - evaluating AI test generation, self‑healing automation, and defect prediction tooling as the QA CoE evolves.

• Own the end‑to‑end test strategy for assigned strategic programmes - covering functional, non‑functional, integration, performance, security, and data validation testing.
• Establish quality gates and go/no‑go decision criteria for each programme milestone.
• Provide QA sign‑off authority - confirming testing completed, critical defects resolved, regression passed, known issues documented, and QA exit criteria met.
• Coordinate cross‑squad testing dependencies - large programmes touch multiple product pillars and require integrated test planning across teams.
• Prepare and present programme quality status to the Head of QA (weekly) and to programme steering committees as required.
• Manage programme‑level defect triage and prioritisation - ensuring severity and priority dimensions are…