Software Test Engineer

Roke, Roke Manor, Romsey, Hampshire, United Kingdom

Great ideas come from different minds. That’s why we bring together engineers, scientists, analysts, and creatives from every background — and give them the trust, tools, and freedom to make a difference. What connects us is the mission: solving meaningful problems and building capability that protects what matters most.
And as the challenges evolve, so do we — working on the technologies that will shape tomorrow, not just today.

About Roke

Roke offers specialist knowledge in sensors, communications, cyber, and AI and ML. We change the way organisations think and act – through dynamic insights from the analysis of multiple layers of data. We take care of the innovative, technical stuff that keeps everyone safe – that’s our mission, passion, and motivation.
Joining a team united by purpose and ambition, you’ll be at the heart of an exciting growth journey. We push technical boundaries, together. We re-invest in product innovation, and we empower our people to make a difference.
The Opportunity

We are looking for a Software Assurance Engineer to help assure the quality, resilience, and operational readiness of complex software systems. The role combines hands on operational responsibility with deep technical insight into the software stack, using automated testing and observability to expose functional, performance, and robustness issues early and continuously.
This is not a black box QA role
. You will work closely with development teams, using white box knowledge of system design, code, and architecture to build confidence in software behaviour under real operational conditions.

Your Role

In this role you will work closely with software developers, users, project managers, heads of engineering, quality assurance, and IT colleagues. You will take a cross cutting view of the software lifecycle, helping ensure that systems are not only functionally correct but also reliable, observable, and performant in service.
You will support code releases, deployments, and live services, while also designing and implementing automated tests that exercise software behaviour at multiple levels. The role requires strong technical capability alongside the ability to communicate risks, trade-offs, and system behaviour clearly to a wide range of stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities & Tasks

You are a technically strong engineer who enjoys working across development, test, and operations boundaries to improve system assurance and reliability.

Key responsibilities include:

• Contribute to system reliability and availability through SRE aligned practices, including monitoring, alerting, incident analysis, and post incident learning.
• Design, implement, and maintain automated test suites to validate:
  • Functional correctness
  • Performance characteristics
  • Stability, resilience, and failure behaviour
• Act as a white box tester, using knowledge of internal design and implementation to target risk areas within the software stack.
• Work alongside developers to build testability, observability, and resilience into software from the outset.
• Support and oversee code releases and deployments, ensuring systems are production ready.
• Develop and maintain tooling for:
  • Continuous testing
  • Performance and load testing
  • Fault injection and robustness testing where appropriate
• Analyse system behaviour using logs, metrics, and traces to identify weaknesses or unexpected interactions.
• Document findings clearly, including test results, limitations, failure modes, and operational risks.
• Participate in sprint ceremonies, including planning, stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives, contributing a reliability and assurance perspective.
• Collaborate with user researchers and stakeholders to ensure system behaviour meets user expectations under real-world conditions.

Skills and Experience Required
We’re looking for individuals with strong analytical thinking, an engineering mindset, and a passion for building reliable systems.

You will have experience across several of the following areas:

• Designing and implementing automated tests (unit, integration, system, performance)
• Experience with white box testing techniques and…