About Nonacus
We’re an employee-owned company based in Birmingham in our 11th year of helping patients find cancer simply, quickly and accurately.
We research, design and manufacture all products from our Quinton HQ, having supplied over 50 million test kits to dozens of NHS sites, every major UK private healthcare group and exporting to 38 countries worldwide.
We’re looking for talented and driven people to help us achieve our vision of everyone on earth having access to simple, fast and accurate non-invasive cancer testing.
Purpose Statement
Reporting to the Principal Bioinformatics Engineer, the QA Engineer / Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) will help ensure the quality and reliability of Nonacus Clinical Services’ software systems. An entry-level role ideal for a recent computer science graduate, the position combines software quality assurance (0.5 FTE) with software development (0.5 FTE) providing both testing capability and additional development capacity to the team. Working closely with developers and bioinformaticians, the QA Engineer will grow their testing and engineering skills within a regulated diagnostics environment.
Key responsibilities
Software quality assurance & testing
- Design, write, and execute test cases and test plans for clinical and laboratory software.
- Carry out regression testing for software changes, upgrades, and releases to confirm existing functionality is unaffected.
- Document test evidence, defects, and outcomes clearly to support the quality management system.
- Provide QA support across the software, clinical bioinformatics, and innovation teams.
Software development
- Contribute 0.5 FTE of development capacity, building and maintaining features, fixes, and internal tooling under guidance.
- Write clean, testable, well-documented code and participate in code review to maintain engineering quality standards.
- Develop and maintain automated tests to improve coverage and release confidence over time.
Validation, quality & regulatory support
- Support software validation activities consistent with applicable quality standards (e.g. ISO 13485, ISO 15189, ISO 27001, GDPR), with support and guidance from the quality team.
- Maintain clear documentation of test plans, results, and validation evidence as required by the quality management system.
- Collaborate across the Nonacus group on cross-functional company goals, and remain flexible and proactive in handling assignments as required.
Person specification
Essential
- A degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related discipline.
- Exposure to software development or testing through study, projects, internships, or placements.
- Foundational hands-on programming experience.
- Foundational programming ability, ideally in Python.
- A methodical, systematic approach to testing and problem-solving.
- Clear written-documentation skills.
- Strong attention to detail.
- Willingness to learn and to follow documented procedures within a regulated environment.
- Good communication and collaboration skills across technical and non-technical teams.
- Ability to manage own workload following appropriate onboarding and training.
Desirable
- ISTQB Foundation Level certification, or a demonstrable interest in working toward it.
- A relevant placement year or significant project work.
- Internship, placement, or project experience specifically in software testing or QA.
- Exposure to regulated software development or healthcare data environments.
- Awareness of LIMS or quality management systems.
- Exposure to test-automation tools (e.g. Selenium, Playwright, pytest).
- Familiarity with CI/CD tooling (e.g. GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).
- Familiarity with relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL) and SQL.
- Enthusiasm for working in a clinical diagnostics environment and contributing to improving patient care.
We’re an equal opportunities employer focused on achieving our mission, with an end output that will ultimately be measured not in dollars & cents, but in the number of human lives saved by early diagnosis made possible by our achievements.
