QA Lead - Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited : Job Details

Your new companyA high-growth SaaS company headquartered in Exeter, recognised as one of The Sunday Times Best Places to Work. With a strong engineering culture and a modern tech stack, they're scaling rapidly and investing heavily in quality engineering and automation to support their product roadmap.

Your new role

As Lead QA, you'll take ownership of the end-to-end quality assurance strategy across a suite of web and mobile applications. Reporting to the Head of Engineering, you'll lead the QA function, define test architecture, and drive automation initiatives. You'll be hands-on with test frameworks, release cycles, and CI/CD pipelines, while mentoring junior QA engineers and collaborating closely with developers, DevOps, and product teams. Key responsibilities include:

• Designing and executing test strategies for functional, regression, performance, and exploratory testing
• Building and maintaining automated test suites using tools like Playwright, Cypress, or Selenium
• Leading API testing efforts using Postman or similar tools
• Supporting CI/CD pipelines and release management
• Driving defect triage, root cause analysis, and quality metrics reporting
• Championing QA best practices and continuous improvement across the SDLC

What you'll need to succeed

• Proven experience in a QA leadership or senior QA engineering role
• Strong JavaScript skills and experience with modern test automation frameworks
• Solid understanding of RESTful APIs and hands-on experience with API testing tools
• Familiarity with Git-based workflows and version control (Git/GitHub)
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments
• Excellent communication and mentoring skills
• Bonus: Mobile testing experience, ISTQB certification, exposure to containerised environments or cloud platforms

What you'll get in return

• Competitive salary up to £60,000 DOE
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays
• Flexible working hours
• Hybrid working: 2 days in the office, 3 days remote

What you need to do now

If you're interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now.If this job isn't quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion about your career.

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