Principal Quality Engineer

Description

This is a permanent principal-level quality engineering role focused on modern automation and AI-assisted testing.

The company's US unit serves underserved and specialty commercial clients through regional brokers and direct distribution, and is the fastest-growing business unit in the wider group.

Founded in 2006, the unit has about 400 staff, mostly based in 6 major cities.

Its commercial lines include technology, cyber and data risk, several professional liability lines, media, entertainment, management liability, crime, kidnap and ransom, commercial property and terrorism cover.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, build and ongoing evolution of automation frameworks based on Playwright and Cucumber.
• Push an automation-first approach so every new feature ships with automated tests at the UI, API, integration and regression levels.
• Work with developers on testability reviews, shift-left practices and continuous testing to raise code quality.
• Own the test strategy for assigned value streams, covering coverage, reliability and alignment with CI/CD pipelines.
• Build reusable, scalable frameworks that serve several teams and applications.
• Connect automated tests to CI/CD pipelines such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps or similar tools.
• Set standards for test data, mocking and service virtualization.
• Assess and adopt tools that make automated tests faster, more stable and easier to observe.
• Define and enforce automation practice, defect triage, root-cause analysis and quality gates.
• Work with QE leadership to standardise tooling, reporting and quality metrics across teams.
• Track and report automation coverage, flakiness, performance trends and release readiness.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, Architecture and Security to test early in the development lifecycle.
• Run enablement sessions on Playwright, Cucumber, TypeScript best practices and continuous testing.
• Support performance, security and observability initiatives as needed.
• Use AI for test generation, anomaly detection and predictive analytics.
• Support and guide scrum teams and champion ongoing improvement.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software test automation or software engineering experience, including 5+ years in a principal or lead role.
• Deep hands-on work with TypeScript, Playwright, Cucumber and modern automation frameworks.
• Solid grasp of CI/CD pipelines, cloud-native application testing and DevOps-aligned QA workflows.
• You have built automation frameworks from the ground up and expanded them across multiple teams.
• Solid understanding of performance testing, API testing and test observability tools.
• Familiarity with Agile and SAFe practices.
• Nice to have: insurance or financial services domain experience, a plus.
• Excellent communication, collaboration and technical leadership skills.

Conditions

Permanent position.

Hybrid role requiring 2 days a week in the office.

Reports directly to the Director of Quality Engineering.

Pay depends on the role's scope and complexity, its location, the candidate's background and qualifications, and other employment terms.

Benefits

• Base pay plus a bonus tied to personal and company performance.
• 401(k) with competitive company matching.
• Health, vision, dental and FSA plans, including medical, limited purpose and dependent care.
• Company-paid group term life, short-term disability and long-term disability coverage.
• 24 PTO days plus 2 company days, 10 paid holidays plus 1 paid floating holiday, and the option to buy 5 PTO days.
• Paid parental leave.
• 4 weeks paid sabbatical after every 5 years of service.
• Financial adoption assistance and medical travel reimbursement programs.
• Annual reimbursement of up to $600 for health club membership or fitness program fees.
• The company received the 2024 Cigna Well-Being Award for a best-in-class health and wellness program.
• Modern, open office spaces and complimentary drinks.
• Dynamic, creative, values-driven culture.
• Support for volunteering and social responsibility, including matching donations to qualifying non-profits through the company's sister non-profit foundation.