Senior QA Automation Engineer

Would you like to kick start your career in a supportive, collaborative and innovative company?

Do you enjoy working as part of an enthusiastic, passionate, and collaborative team?

Join our Internal Technology Team

IT systems play a pivotal role in Softcat's success. As our business grows and evolves it is essential, we have a set of reliable, scalable yet flexible systems. The Business Systems Team are responsible for the design, delivery, and management of these key business applications. In support we work in conjunction with an ever-increasing number of Vendors, Partners, and Softcat Stakeholders.

About the Role

As a Senior QA Automation Engineer, you will provide technical leadership in building and evolving a scalable, reliable test automation capability. You will take ownership of automation strategy, frameworks, and quality practices across the delivery lifecycle, working closely with developers, DevOps, and product teams to embed quality from design through to production.

You will be expected to influence engineering standards, mentor others, and ensure automated testing delivers fast, meaningful feedback aligned to business risk. This role is suited to someone who is has solid experience of owning and driving automation quality at a system level

As Senior QA Automation Engineer, you'll be responsible for:

• Own and evolve the automation framework and processes ensuring appropriate coverage across UI, API, integration, and regression layers
• Design, build, and maintain robust automation frameworks from the ground up, focusing on reusability, maintainability, and performance
• Act as a technical authority for test automation, setting standards, patterns, and best practices
• Partner with developers to embed quality early, contributing to acceptance criteria, testability, and design discussions
• Lead automation planning through risk-based analysis, ensuring effort is focused where it matters most

We'd love you to have

• Strong experience as a Senior Test Automation Engineer or equivalent role
• Strong programming skills in languages like Python, C#, or JavaScript for creating test scripts
• Proven experience designing, building and maintaining automation frameworks from the ground up
• Thorough hands‑on knowledge of automation tools such as Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, Appium, and test runners/frameworks
• Strong experience testing APIs and services using tools and libraries (e.g. REST clients, contract testing, Postman)

We also acknowledge that the confidence gap and imposter syndrome are a real thing and can get in the way of us meeting fantastic talent, so please don't hesitate to apply – we would love to hear from you!

Work in a way that works for you

We recognise that everyone is different and that the way in which people want to work and deliver at their best is different for everyone too. In this role, we can offer the following flexible working patterns:

• Hybrid working
• Working flexible hours - flexing the times you start and finish during the day
• Flexibility around school pick up and drop offs

Working with us

Wherever you work, we want you to experience the freedom and autonomy to realise your potential. You will feel supported by a team that celebrates individuality, encourages different perspectives, and embraces every background.

Join us

To become part of the success story, please apply now.

If you have a disability or neurodiversity, we can provide support or adjustments that you may need throughout our recruitment process or any mitigating circumstance you wish for us to consider. Any information you share on your application will be treated in confidence. You can find out more about life at Softcat and our commitments to diversity and inclusion at jobs.softcat.com/jobs/our-culture/

Here at Softcat, we don't prohibit the use of AI (artificial intelligence) in our application process, as we understand how far it can go to creating a truly equitable candidate experience. That being said, as a culture-driven organisation, we believe that the genuine essence of each person is what truly matters, so we highly encourage you to be as authentically you as possible when submitting your application to showcase your true and whole self.