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Owen Carter

@ocarterjs

Test engineering leader. 10 years transforming QA at national scale — distributed teams, automation architecture, observability, quality strategy.

United Kingdom

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What I'm looking for

Senior test engineering leader seeking a mission-driven company where quality is a product outcome, not a checkbox. I want to own test strategy end-to-end: automation infrastructure, exploratory testing, and observability tooling. 10 years transforming testing practices from scratch, currently leading 25 engineers across UK and India. Remote-first, open source culture preferred.

I lead test engineering transformation at enterprise scale. Over the past decade, I've taken broken testing cultures — inherited test suites with zero business logic coverage, 9-hour execution times, 52.7% test duplication — and rebuilt them into modern, CI-integrated quality operations.

At my current role, I set technical direction for 25 automation engineers distributed across the UK and India. I architected a 15-package internal testing library covering API clients, Playwright fixtures, performance utilities, contract assertions, security runners, and test data builders — all published to a private registry with enforced quality gates.

I believe quality is a product outcome, not a testing activity. That philosophy drives everything I build:

• Built a bespoke WCAG 2.2 static code analyser in one week that replaced 146 days of manual accessibility auditing — now runs as a CI gate across every frontend deployment

• Replaced unmaintainable vendor scripts with a distributed k6 performance framework including Grafana/InfluxDB observability dashboards and emergency cancellation pipelines

• Analysed 8,753 quarterly validation tests, identified 52.7% duplication, and built a data-driven roadmap projecting 98.5% cost reduction

• Transformed release cadence from monthly to twice-daily deployments through Playwright framework redesign and AWS Canary production monitoring

• Grew a greenfield QA team from 3 to 10, building automation across desktop (Electron), mobile (Appium), and server-side streams

My career started in full-stack development (Golang, Angular, Kubernetes) before transitioning to QA engineering — which means I build tools that integrate with engineering workflows, not bolt on externally. I'm an Engineering Architecture Board member, I've presented automation strategy to C-suite executives, and I actively mentor manual testers through the transition to automation engineers.

I thrive in mission-driven organisations that treat quality as a competitive advantage, not a checkbox.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Principal Developer for Quality

Current

RM Education

Apr 2025 - Present (1 year 2 months)

Head of QA automation for a national assessment platform. Lead 25 engineers across UK and India. Architected a 15-package test library, built distributed k6 performance frameworks with Grafana/InfluxDB observability, and delivered a WCAG 2.2 static analyser replacing 146 days of manual auditing. Engineering Architecture Board member.

Test Automation

Current

Founder / Principal Consultant

Current

QA Testing Consultancy

May 2022 - Present (4 years 1 month)

Software quality, automation and CI/CD consultancy services.

Areas of focus include:
- Automation architecture
- Playwright and API automation
- DevOps enablement
- Release confidence and observability
- Engineering workflow optimisation
- QA strategy modernisation

Practical engineering-led approaches to scalable software quality and delivery.

TypeScript JavaScript NodeJS Node Cypress Playwright ReactJS GraphQL CircleCi Lighthouse Amazon S3 Leadership Management Cross Functional Team Management

QA Lead

Playroll

Jan 2024 - Aug 2024 (7 months)

Defined QA strategy for a global HR SaaS platform processing employment across 100+ countries, reporting directly to the CTO. Transformed release cadence from monthly to twice-daily deployments. Integrated AWS Canaries with Puppeteer for production monitoring. Mentored 10-15 engineers in testing practices and DevOps. 200% more automation coverage, 70% less manual effort.

Agile AWS CDK Playwright DevOps Puppeteer React Scrum CI CD Automation Jira

Software Development Engineer Test Lead

Gamma

Apr 2022 - Jan 2024 (1 year 9 months)

Promoted to SDET Lead on a greenfield project, I led three teams of QA engineers across mobile, desktop, and server-side automation streams. I managed technical challenges, mentored new graduate engineers, and optimized the automation framework and CI/CD pipelines, enhancing testing efficiency.

QA Leadership Automation CI CD Mobile Testing Server side Testing Mentoring Agile Team Management Technical Escalation desktop testing

Software Development Engineer in Test

Gamma

May 2020 - Apr 2022 (1 year 11 months)

As the first Software Developer in Test on a greenfield project, I was responsible for automation testing across Desktop, Mobile, and Server-side streams. I managed the CI/CD pipeline and contributed to frontend and backend development, growing the team significantly.

Automation Testing CI CD React Team Growth SIP Protocols SaaS Agile Test Management Deployment Node.Js NodeJS

Software Development Engineer in Test

GRI UK

Sep 2018 - May 2020 (1 year 8 months)

Promoted to SDET, I led the redesign of an automation test framework using Node.js and Selenium. I implemented a BDD-style test suite and introduced Dredd for API testing, mentoring junior developers and enhancing automation practices.

Selenium BDD API Testing Dredd Jenkins Agile Mentoring Automation NodeJS Test Framework

Junior Full Stack Software Developer

GRI UK

Sep 2017 - Sep 2018 (1 year)

As a Junior Fullstack Developer, I contributed to the development of E-tips, a SaaS platform. I developed CRUD screens, managed database migrations, and handled ETL processes, ensuring smooth platform functionality and improved user experience.

Fullstack Development CRUD REST APIs Angular Go Bootstrap SQL ETL Testing Node.Js NodeJS

Graduate System Analyst Programmer

NMi

Oct 2016 - Jun 2017 (8 months)

As a Graduate System Analyst Programmer, I verified RTP percentages on gambling machines through large-scale simulations, developed automation scripts, and ensured data accuracy and randomness. I mentored mathematicians in programming and improved compliance processes through automation.

RTP Analysis Data Visualization Bash Scripting Simulation Development Statistical Analysis Mersenne Twister Programming Mentorship Compliance Automation Cron Job

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Bangor University

Bachelor's degree, Computer Information Systems for Business

2013 - 2016

Grade: 2:1

Studied Computer Information Systems for Business, focusing on the integration of technology and business processes. Developed skills in HTML5, CSS, SQL, Linux, and Bash.