Senior QA Engineer - Product team

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations. We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations.

In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track. The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories. We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply. We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work.

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior QA Engineer to lead quality efforts across the full software development lifecycle—from early-stage requirements through to production deployment.

You will play a pivotal role in embedding Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) practices, building test automation frameworks, and ensuring every release meets our high standards for reliability, scalability, and performance. Working closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and Architects, you’ll bring a test-first mindset and help shape quality from day one.

This is a hands-on role for someone who thrives in complex, distributed environments, enjoys solving problems through automation, and wants to be part of a cross-functional, security-focused product team delivering into public sector and regulated domains like BFSI.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive a robust QA strategy across microservices, data pipelines, APIs, and UI
• Champion BDD principles—writing and maintaining Gherkin-style feature files and executable specifications
• Build and evolve automated test suites using custom frameworks in Kotlin/Java
• Lead frontend testing (React/Playwright) and backend/API testing in an event-driven Kafka-based architecture
• Integrate testing into CI/CD pipelines using Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and GitLab
• Contribute to strategies for non-functional testing, including performance, resilience, and security
• Collaborate with developers, product managers, and client-facing teams to define and refine acceptance criteria
• Support incident response and root-cause analysis through effective test coverage and tooling
• Mentor junior QA engineers and help scale best practices across teams
• Contribute to documentation and test observability (logs, metrics, dashboards)

Tech Stack & Environment

• Languages / Frameworks: Kotlin, Java, Spring Boot
• Frontend: React, tested using Playwright
• Testing Methodologies: BDD (Gherkin, Cucumber, JUnit)
• Automation: Custom test frameworks in Kotlin/Java
• Architecture: Microservices, asynchronous/event-driven (Kafka)
• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (Azure and GCP beneficial), Docker, Kubernetes
• CI/CD & DevOps: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins

What We’re Looking For

Must-Haves:

• Minimum 5+yrs of proven experience as a QA Engineer in a modern, product-led software environment
• Strong background in BDD, including writing feature files and executable test specifications
• Hands-on experience with automated testing in Kotlin/Java
• Deep knowledge of testing APIs, services, and user interfaces
• Experience working with Kafka-based event-driven systems
• Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and containerized applications
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills, especially in distributed systems
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across technical and non-technical teams
• A passion for automation, testing strategy, and building testable systems by design

Nice-to-Haves:

• Exposure to regulated environments (e.g., BFSI, healthcare, public sector)
• Experience with performance, security, or chaos testing
• Familiarity with observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry)
• Knowledge of contract testing, mocking, or service virtualization

Mindset & Cultural Fit

• A builder’s mindset, focused on enabling early, frequent, and safe delivery through automated confidence
• A belief that quality is everyone’s responsibility, but you lead the way
• Resilient in fast-paced, ambiguous environments, with a calm and structured approach to testing under pressure
• Detail-oriented, but always guided by the bigger product and user context
• Curious, collaborative, and continuously seeking to improve systems, processes, and team capability

Aker Systems Attributes

At Aker we work as a team, we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help out our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion.

In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday (excluding bank holidays), Company Paid Medical Insurance, Life Assurance (4x times basic salary), Pension scheme, Perks at Work, Cycle Scheme, Tech Scheme and Season Ticket Loan. Plus, a list of voluntary benefits including Dental Insurance, Critical illness cover and Virtual GP.

Equal Opportunities

Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.