Job ref: 189468
TPR grade: TDD 7 – Lead Specialist
About us
More than half the UK working population rely on The Pensions Regulator (TPR) to regulate their retirement savings. With a career at TPR, you’ll be joining an organisation that will impact on millions of lives for decades to come.
Everyone at TPR plays an important role in helping to keep more than £2 trillion of savings safe. We’re committed to bringing people into TPR who are ready to make a difference and put UK savers at the heart of what we do.
It is important to us that TPR remains a great place to work. We do all we can to help our people reach their full potential with learning, secondment, and development opportunities. We put our 900+ employees first, supporting flexible working and offer a diverse, lively, and inclusive environment. This includes our Disability Network, Family Network, LGBT+ Network (Proud), Minority Ethnic (ME) Network and Women’s Network, which offer spaces to connect.
Our new corporate strategy outlines a bold and challenging vision of how pensions regulation should evolve to keep pace with a change in the scale and nature of the industry. We are at the start of that journey. Join us to find out what part you can play.
We operate a hybrid working model, with regular attendance in our Brighton office to connect with colleagues across the business.
Role
Our Test team works with our Agile teams to deliver positive outcomes on a range of projects and programmes for both the organisation, and saver, for years to come.
Our team is dedicated to ensuring that our software and applications work correctly and meet quality standards. Within this role, you’ll be operating within an exciting and dynamic company-wide technology change programme, which will see the development and delivery of new systems enabling us to support regulatory activity in the business.
We are looking for permanent and 12-month’ fixed-term Test Automation Engineers to join us across a variety of programmes.
As Test Automation Lead, you’ll work as a key member of a Digital, Data and Technology Service Delivery team or Platform/Enabling team, designing, developing, and delivering effective Automation Testing during the development process in a long-lived continuous improvement team.
We will also provide you with support and further training to keep you up to date with the newest technologies to develop your skills further.
Responsibilities
You will:
- lead investigative work into problems and opportunities in existing processes
- lead and advise automation testing with a strategic understanding of IT trends and technologies and how they relate to TPR development and delivery, driving the collection of information and the creation of recommendations for improvements
- absorb large amounts of conflicting information and use it to determine solutions
- input into the overall TPR Test Team strategy, think creatively, ask the right questions and critically evaluate and communicate findings to the larger team
- be the person on-point and overall responsible for the automation testing delivery within a service delivery/Platform/enabling team
- demonstrate knowledge of emerging tools and techniques
- set up frameworks based on the needs of the team
- effectively work across different tools and software languages
- advise on up-to-date functional and non-functional testing techniques
- lead, assess and peer-review the work of others
- coach and mentor others with some line management if required
- write functional and non-functional test approaches for major projects and provide guidance on risk approaches
- devise new functional and non-functional test techniques and provide recommendations in conjunction with the Delivery Test Lead or Test Manager
- devise plans for transforming currently existing manual test scripts into automated test processes
Essential and desirable criteria
- Professional experience with manual and automation testing of web-based applications, ideally using Selenium and/or Playwright.
- Experience crafting automation tests and demonstrating test frameworks collaborating with some of the following: RESTful services, Message Queues, Relational Databases.
- Experience of SQL Server and proven capability to write sophisticated queries to analyse problems and prepare data.
- Experience a range of testing methodologies and techniques including agile, with the ability to write test procedures, plans and report development/implementation.
- Extensive experience in automation framework outlining and script coding.
- Knowledge of up-to-date web automation test patterns such as the Page Object Model.
Person specification
- Proactive and flexible.
- Can do approach.
- Ability to prioritise and use initiative.
- Problem solving and analytical skills.
- Attention to detail and accuracy.
- Personable and a team player.
Salary and benefits
As well as a salary between £55,504 and £70,922, we offer:
- Civil Service Pension arrangements, which are recognised as some of the best in the pensions world
- discretionary bonus arrangements
- access to performance related pay progression
- 25 days annual leave provision
- flexible working arrangements
- development opportunities
- enhanced parental leave arrangements
- a free employee assistance programme
- an excellent office location in Brighton
How to apply
To apply please email recruitmentteam@tpr.gov.uk quoting role reference number 189468 along with:
- a covering letter with details of how your skills and experience meet the role requirements
- a copy of your CV
- details of your notice period
- stating on your application if you would like to be considered for permanent or fixed-term opportunities.
Current employees in their first 12 months of employment who want to apply for this vacancy should first contact their line manager to discuss their application.
We are an inclusive employer and offer equal opportunities regardless of an individual’s age, disability, gender identity, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
As a Disability Confident employer, we’re committed to the recruitment, employment, retention and development of people with disabilities and to improving their employment opportunities. Candidates who declare that they have a disability and who meet the essential criteria for the job will be offered an interview.
Applications will be considered on a part time and job share basis.
In accordance with Home Office guidance, the successful candidate will be required to provide their right to work in the UK before they start employment. Unfortunately, TPR is not able to offer sponsorship at the time. TPR is a UK-based organisation with a working location in Brighton, candidates must live in the UK to be employed by us.
TPR is an arm’s length government body and part of the public service.
Any offer of employment will be subject to the receipt of satisfactory background screening checks and criminal record checks (BPSS).
If you have any queries about this role, or if you have a disability and wish to request a reasonable adjustment at any stage of the recruitment process, please email recruitmentteam@tpr.gov.uk.