Quality Cell Lead

BriefWe are looking for an experienced Quality Cell Lead to define, lead, and continuously improve quality engineering and testing practices across multiple engineering cells. This is a hands-on technical leadership role focused on embedding quality throughout the software development lifecycle, ensuring that quality is engineered into products from the outset rather than verified only at the end. You will own the overall quality and test strategy, establish consistent standards and best practices, and ensure comprehensive testing coverage across the platform. Working closely with Technical Leads, Product Owners, and engineering teams, you will oversee functional testing, integration testing, end-to-end testing, performance testing, regression testing, and user acceptance testing. A key aspect of the role is supervising and improving AI-agent-driven testing capabilities, including automated test generation, defect detection, test execution, and continuous quality monitoring. The ideal candidate combines strong software testing expertise, quality management experience, technical problem-solving skills, and a forward-thinking approach to AI-enabled software delivery.Company DetailsOur client is a well-established UK-based digital retail and financial services organization with a strong focus on technology, customer experience, and innovation.The business is undertaking a significant technology transformation program involving a new website, order management, customer service, and credit platform capabilities. The technology team is responsible for delivering the credit platform, while working closely with Financial Services business teams to support regulatory, operational, and business readiness.The program is moving through a staged customer cohort go-live from October through February, creating a need for strong delivery leadership, stakeholder coordination, governance, and readiness management.This is an opportunity to join an established technology transformation program at a critical stage, working across technology and business teams to ensure successful and controlled delivery.

Responsibilities and AttributionsResponsibilitiesDefine, own, and maintain the overall quality assurance and test strategy across engineering cells, ensuring consistent standards, methodologies, and coverage across the platform.Establish and maintain quality requirements, testing standards, best practices, and engineering guidelines that support reliable, secure, scalable, and maintainable software delivery.Ensure quality is embedded throughout the software development lifecycle, promoting early testing, defect prevention, continuous validation, and risk-based quality practices.Lead functional testing activities across development stages, ensuring that test coverage aligns with functional requirements, technical specifications, and business priorities.Oversee user acceptance testing planning and execution, ensuring that test scenarios, environments, entry criteria, exit criteria, and reporting processes are appropriately defined and managed.Supervise AI-agent-driven testing capabilities, including automated test generation, regression testing, defect detection, test execution, and test coverage maintenance.Identify and implement opportunities for agent-led testing and continuous testing, including improvements to testing tools, frameworks, workflows, and AI prompts.Work hands-on where necessary to develop, improve, debug, and maintain test automation frameworks, testing tools, and quality engineering solutions.Collaborate with Technical Leads, Product Owners, and engineering cell members to ensure quality requirements are understood, prioritised, implemented, and validated.Ensure clear ownership and alignment of acceptance criteria, recognising that Product Managers own business acceptance criteria while the Quality Cell Lead owns technical acceptance criteria.Define and monitor quality metrics, test coverage, defect trends, automation performance, and testing effectiveness across engineering cells.Establish measurement objectives and reporting mechanisms that provide visibility into quality performance, testing efficiency, and areas requiring improvement.Lead quality reviews, assess testing outcomes, identify process gaps, and implement corrective actions to improve consistency and engineering standards.Ensure appropriate integration, end-to-end, regression, performance, load, and stress testing is implemented and maintained for critical APIs and services.Improve test data availability and test environment readiness, reducing delays caused by missing data, configuration issues, or unreliable environments.Identify, track, and reduce testing-related technical debt, including flaky tests, outdated frameworks, missing automation, and gaps in regression coverage.Assess software deliverables against agreed technical quality and service acceptance criteria, identifying risks that could affect operational readiness or production releases.Provide authoritative guidance on testing methodologies, quality management techniques, test automation, and appropriate tools and frameworks.Maintain a quarterly quality and testing roadmap, alongside a lower-confidence six-month forecast aligned with engineering delivery objectives and platform evolution.Monitor emerging technologies, testing methodologies, AI capabilities, and quality engineering tools, assessing their potential benefits, risks, and opportunities for adoption.Contribute to the continuous improvement of organisational quality policies, standards, processes, and engineering practices.Support and guide engineering teams in applying quality standards consistently while ensuring that day-to-day work allocation remains with the respective cell leads.Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)Quality Engineering and Testing PerformanceQuality roadmap: Maintain a quarterly quality and test roadmap and a lower-confidence six-month forecast aligned with engineering delivery goals and platform evolution.API and critical-service test coverage: Monitor the percentage of critical API endpoints and services covered by functional, integration, and end-to-end tests.Test automation execution rate: Measure the percentage of test cases executed automatically versus manually across environments and CI/CD pipelines, including agent-authored tests.Defect detection and resolution: Track mean time to detect and resolve defects, covering issues identified before and after production release.Defect leakage rate: Measure the percentage of critical defects that escape into production compared with those identified during testing.Consistency of quality standards: Assess adherence to quality frameworks, testing standards, tooling requirements, and review practices across engineering cells.Performance and load testing coverage: Track the percentage of critical services with implemented and maintained load, stress, and performance tests.Test data and environment readiness: Measure the percentage of test cycles delayed by unavailable or invalid test data, environment misconfiguration, or infrastructure issues.Testing technical debt: Track and reduce flaky tests, outdated testing frameworks, missing automation, and outstanding test coverage improvements.AI-led testing effectiveness: Monitor the reliability, coverage, maintainability, and effectiveness of AI-generated tests and agent-led testing workflows.Service acceptance readiness: Ensure critical deliverables are evaluated against agreed technical quality and operational acceptance criteria before release.Continuous improvement: Demonstrate measurable improvements in test reliability, automation, defect prevention, and the consistency of quality practices across engineering cells.

Requisites and QualificationsQualificationsProven experience in software quality engineering, QA, or software testing in a senior or lead role.Strong experience defining test strategies, quality standards, and testing frameworks.Hands-on expertise in functional, API, integration, regression, end-to-end, and user acceptance testing.Experience with test automation, CI/CD pipelines, and continuous testing.Knowledge of performance, load, and stress testing for critical services.Experience with quality metrics, defect management, test coverage, and service acceptance.Strong understanding of software development fundamentals, code reviews, and requirements management.Experience using AI coding agents and AI-driven testing tools for test creation, execution, and defect detection.Ability to validate AI-generated tests for accuracy, reliability, and coverage.Excellent English communication skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly.Strong analytical, problem-solving, and stakeholder management skills.Ability to provide technical leadership, work hands-on, and drive continuous quality improvements.Fully remote: Ability to work independently and collaborate effectively with distributed engineering teams in a remote environment.