Job Title: Senior Test Automation Engineer
Location: London Bridge, SE1 (4 days on-site)
Term: Permanent, Full Time
Salary: Competitive + Benefits (Private Medical, Private Dental, Life Assurance, Private Pension & many more)
Purpose of the job
The Senior Test Engineer will be responsible for establishing and maintaining the structured manual testing, automated regression testing, test management, release assurance, and audit-ready evidence capability required for new and existing systems. The role will support the organisation as it moves from building bespoke solutions towards buying, configuring, integrating, and managing third-party platforms, where repeatable regression testing, UAT support, integration testing, validation evidence, and release control become increasingly important.
This is a hands-on technical quality engineering role requiring the successful candidate to work closely with process owners, Quality Assurance, Computer Systems Validation, IT, software development, vendors, and senior stakeholders to design test approaches, build reusable test packs, automate priority regression testing, support UAT, test APIs and integrations, validate data flows and reports, coordinate defect triage, and provide clear release-readiness evidence.
The role will also configure, maintain, and promote effective use of tooling such as Azure DevOps, Jira, or dedicated test management and automation tooling to provide structured control over test cases, test execution, automation results, defects, retesting, releases, change management, traceability, and audit evidence. A key purpose of the role is to reduce reliance on manual testing, consultants, vendors, and overstretched process owners by creating internal, repeatable, evidence-based test capability.
Context of the job role
Richmond operates a mixed technology estate consisting of in-house developed systems, SaaS/COTS platforms, low-code/no-code tools, integrations, reporting databases, operational spreadsheets and vendor-managed systems. The successful candidate must be comfortable working in a small technology team where requirements, business rules and testing needs are often discovered through process observation, stakeholder workshops, SOP review, data analysis, system walkthroughs and challenge of existing ways of working.
The role requires the ability to work with non-technical process owners who may describe needs through examples, exceptions, symptoms or desired outcomes rather than formal requirements.
The successful candidate must be able to ask structured questions, identify the underlying business rule, document assumptions, expose gaps and translate operational knowledge into scalable, testable and auditable system requirements or test coverage.
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Design, build, maintain, and execute reusable automated regression test packs for priority in-house systems, high-risk change areas, bought platforms, integrations, data flows, reports, permissions, and configuration changes.
- Establish structured test approaches covering functional testing, regression testing, UAT, integration testing, API testing, data validation, configuration testing, release testing, and risk-based validation testing.
- Support Quality Management and Computer Systems Validation activities by producing clear, controlled, and traceable test plans, test scripts, test cases, test evidence, defect records, retest evidence, release-readiness outputs, and validation support documentation in line with SOPs and regulatory expectations.
- Work closely with process owners to ensure they can focus on business input, review, challenge, and sign-off while the Senior Test Engineer prepares and manages the detailed test scripts, test execution structures, defect records, evidence packs, and release assurance artefacts required for delivery.
- Configure, maintain, and promote effective use of Azure DevOps, Jira, or dedicated test management tooling to support test plans, test cases, test runs, automation results, defect management, retesting, release management, traceability, dashboards, reporting, and audit readiness.
- Work with the Senior Technical Business Analyst, QA/CSV, IT, Development, vendors, and implementation partners to ensure requirements, acceptance criteria, configuration decisions, integrations, data flows, and releases are testable, traceable, and supported by appropriate evidence.
- Plan, coordinate, and support UAT with structured scripts, reusable templates, evidence standards, test execution guidance, defect triage, retesting, sign-off readiness, and test status reporting.
- Embed automated test execution and quality gates into future CI/CD, release, and deployment workflows, helping move delivery away from ad-hoc manual checking towards repeatable, measurable, and auditable release assurance.
- Design and execute tests for APIs, integrations, data mappings, reports, authentication, permissions, workflow rules, and system-to-system dependencies across SaaS, COTS, low-code/no-code platforms, internal applications, middleware, and future consolidated platforms.
- Develop or coordinate performance, load, resilience, and production-readiness testing where appropriate for critical applications, integrations, and business processes.
- Coordinate security testing practices where appropriate, including SAST, DAST, vulnerability-focused testing, dependency checks, remediation evidence, and linkage of security findings to defects, risks, retesting, and releases.
- Support legacy system modernisation, replacement, refactoring, and platform consolidation by creating reusable regression packs before major change occurs and by verifying critical processes, integrations, reports, and data outputs before and after change.
- Provide early identification of defects, missing acceptance criteria, insufficient test coverage, weak evidence, release risks, integration risks, performance issues, security concerns, and validation gaps before they become delivery, production, or audit issues.
- Prepare and present test strategies, test status, automation coverage, defect trends, release-readiness summaries, risk-based exceptions, and recommendations to senior stakeholders and project governance forums.
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Bachelor’s degree in computer science or relevant experience.
- Proven experience in a senior testing, quality engineering, or test automation role.
- Prior experience supporting technology delivery, testing, validation, and quality activities within a Clinical Research Organisation or healthcare environment.
- Previous experience working as a Hands-on Test Engineering Manager, Senior Test Automation Engineer, SDET, or equivalent role within complex systems delivery.
- Experience establishing automated regression testing, reusable test packs, structured manual testing, and release assurance for business-critical systems.
- Experience working across regulated, quality-controlled, or audit-sensitive environments, ideally including Computer Systems Validation or similar evidence-based delivery.
- Experience using Azure DevOps, Jira, or dedicated test management tooling for test planning, test execution, defect management, traceability, and reporting.
- Experience testing SaaS, COTS, low-code/no-code, integration, API, workflow, reporting, or data-driven platforms.
Founded in 2001, Richmond Pharmacology is a leading Contract Research Organisation (CRO) with a heritage in first- in- human and adaptive clinical trials. It has conducted around 20% of all UK Phase 1 studies and ran the first clinical trial in which CRISPR therapy was delivered through the bloodstream to edit genes inside the human body.
Today, Richmond supports global pharmaceutical, biotech, and genetic engineering partners, including several top 10 pharma companies, in advancing next- generation therapies. In 2020, it established the Richmond Research Institute to expand understanding of under- researched diseases.
