Senior Software Development Engineer in Test

About the Role

We're at an exciting moment in our engineering journey. As we modernise our platforms and ways of working, we’re also re‑introducing what "good" looks like for quality at Holland & Barrett. We’re moving from traditional testing approaches towards a modern, engineering‑led quality strategy: unit testing, contract testing, component testing, integration testing, E2E flows, synthetics, and strong observability across our microservices.

We’re looking for a Senior SDET who is hands‑on, highly technical, and passionate about setting teams up for long‑term success. In this role, you’ll build the frameworks, tools, and practices that empower engineers to write and maintain their own tests — with you acting as the subject‑matter expert, coach, and quality advocate who helps them get there. This is a high‑impact role within our eCommerce Engineering organisation (web and mobile).

You’ll collaborate closely with engineers, designers and product teams to embed a test‑first mindset and raise the bar for reliability, delivery confidence, and customer experience.

• Design, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks that are easy for engineers to use and extend.
• Partner with teams to introduce modern microservices testing approaches across unit, contract, component, integration and E2E layers.
• Lead the shift toward engineers owning their tests by providing guidance, examples, and hands‑on pairing to help teams adopt best practices confidently.
• Collaborate with Engineering and Dev Ops to evolve CI/CD pipelines and embed automation earlier in the lifecycle.
• Improve observability around testing and reliability, integrating logs, traces, metrics, synthetics, and alerts to increase confidence in releases.
• Promote good testing principles and high‑quality engineering practices across teams; become a trusted voice for quality.
• Act as a consultant‑style partner to squads, helping them design testable systems and adopt pragmatic approaches to automation.
• Support a culture where quality is shared by everyone, not a separate phase or team.
• Demonstrate excellent attention to detail and help others develop the same discipline.

• Strong software engineering background in any language.
• Proven experience building automation frameworks from scratch.
• Solid understanding of microservice testing approaches: unit, contract, component, integration, and E2E.
• Experience with tools such as Playwright, Cypress, JUnit, Wire Mock, or similar.
• Strong CI/CD knowledge (Git Lab CI, Jenkins, etc.) and familiarity with Infrastructure‑as‑Code and cloud‑native environments (containers, Kubernetes).
• Understanding of observability (Grafana, Datadog, Prometheus, Open Telemetry, etc.) and how it supports quality and testing.
• Ability to explain technical concepts clearly to different audiences.
• A collaborative style, with experience driving culture change or elevating quality practices across multiple squads.

• Experience writing in JavaScript/Type Script, Java, Kotlin or Go.
• Experience with React Native test automation.
• Experience testing AI/ML systems.
• Exposure to building internal developer platforms or quality‑focused tooling.
• Experience in software engineering, SRE, Dev Ops, or developer experience teams.

• Languages: JavaScript/Type Script, Java/Kotlin Spring Boot, Go
• Frontend: React, React Native
• Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Git Lab CI/CD
• Testing: Playwright, Browser Stack
• Architecture: Microservices

We know that great people don’t always see themselves in every requirement. If this role inspires you and you believe your skills and experience could make a positive impact here, we’d really love to hear from you. Please apply, even if you don’t meet every single requirement.

• Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits
  • Health Cash Plan
  • Life Assurance
  • Bonus Scheme - Based on company & personal performance
  • Virtual GP
  • Private Medical care
  • FREE at‑home blood test kit
  • Holiday Purchase option
  • Pension Contribution scheme
  • Access to ‘Wellhub' with gyms, studios and wellbeing apps
• Discounts & Savings
  • 25% Colleague Discount with FREE Standard Delivery
  • Exclusive Discounts from a wide range of…