Senior QA Engineer

Senior QA Engineer  

£50,000 - £55,000 (+ Benefits) 

Reports to: Lead QA Engineer 

Contract: Permanent 

Hours: Full time 35 hours per week 

Location: Stratford, London. Office-based with high flexibility (1-2 days per week in the office) 

Closing date: 16 August 2026 at 23:55 

This vacancy may close earlier if a high volume of applications is received or once a suitable candidate is found, therefore we strongly recommend that you apply early to avoid disappointment. If you require more time to apply as part of a reasonable adjustment, please contact recruitment@cancer.org.uk as soon as possible. 

Recruitment process: Two competency-based interviews with the second interview including a technical exercise   

How do I apply? We operate an anonymised shortlisting process in our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion. CVs are required for all applications; but we won’t be able to view them until we invite you for an interview. Instead, we ask you to fully complete the work history section of the online application form for us to be able to assess you quickly, fairly, and objectively. 

At Cancer Research UK, we exist to beat cancer. 

We are professionals with purpose, beating cancer every day. But we need to go much further and much faster. That’s why we’re looking for someone talented, someone who wants to develop their skills, someone like you. 

Cancer Research UK has an ambitious Engineering Strategy and modern Tech Stack with a complex hybrid (on-premise & multi-cloud) infrastructure underpinning an extensive technical estate. As part of our Strategy, the charity is delivering a range of bold, modern change initiatives and programmes to better harness our technology to deliver more engaging and positive experiences for our audiences and inspire millions of people in deeper, more meaningful ways to join our mission (and in turn drive growth). 

As a Senior QA Engineer, you will be part of our Fundraising & Trading portfolio rotating across a range of change initiatives, products, and in-house solutions that helped raise £597m towards Cancer Research UK's life-saving work (e.g., our events management product which enables mass events such as Race for Life, London Marathon, SU2C, Shine; our Online Fundraising Web Application, our Ecommerce platforms, and many more). You will be involved in the whole Software Development Lifecycle process from initial planning to execution and monitoring. You’ll partner closely with Product teams and end-users to ensure systems are operating effectively and safely by designing, developing, and maintaining test automation frameworks. You’ll also support the QA team in moving away from manual testing to automated processes whilst supporting the development of our QA Engineers. 

If you are a QA Engineer skilled in using Typescript within a test automation framework to drive automation, we would love for you to join our mission

. 

What will I be doing? 

• Getting involved in the entire Software Development Life Cycle process from initial planning to execution and monitoring.  

• Designing, developing, and maintaining test automation frameworks to efficiently catch bugs and ensure everything is running smoothly. Integrating automation suites into CI/CD pipelines.  

• Creating, reviewing, and executing high-quality test cases aligned to user stories, design guidelines, acceptance criteria, and business processes.  

• Interpreting and reporting testing results and being an ambassador for quality in every phase of the development process.  

• Developing deep expertise in the business products, understanding the core business functionalities and flows.  Understanding the overall technical architecture and how each feature is implemented.  

• Creating testing related documentation such as test strategies, cases/scripts, and bug reports assessing quality and associated risk.   

• Being an advocate for quality and encouraging developers at all levels to write high quality, testable software.  

• Providing guidance and assistance on functional and non-functional testing.  

• Leveraging AI to accelerate test authoring, codebase quality, coverage and quality insights. Deciding when it is safe to use AI and where human intervention is needed.  

• Coaching and mentoring junior QA Engineers.  

• Ensure equality and diversity are celebrated and considered as part of all decisions taken.  

• Committed to Cancer Research UK’s vision to bring forward the day all cancers are cured.  

• Undertake other tasks as necessary to contribute to the team objectives and those of Cancer Research UK.  

 

What skills will I need? 

• Experience of working in an agile environment.  

• Quality mindset with pragmatic, risk-based decision-making.  

• Strong stakeholder management and the ability to translate quality risks into business language.  

• Skilled in the design of functional acceptance, end-to-end, integration, and regression tests.  

• Coaching and mentoring skills.  

• Working experience of AWS services, API(REST/SOAP/GraphQL), Web GUI and cross-browser testing.   

• Some of the Tools we like: Playwright, Playwright MCP, Axe, Vitest, Postman,  Applitools, BrowserStack, Datadog, and GitHub Copilot.  

• Working experience of using Jira and Zephyr Scale for defect and test management.  

• Solid experience of using TypeScript. 

• Practical knowledge of non-functional testing types such as accessibility, performance and security testing.  

• Passion for exploratory testing.  

• Exceptional attention to detail required.  

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.  

• Excellent communication, and collaboration abilities.  

• An enthusiasm for new technologies with the ability to adapt and learn.  

• Confidence and initiative to evolve ideas and bring together pieces of work to produce changes.  

• An active interest in self-learning.  

• Exposure to AI tooling agentic and generative – prompts, guardrails, and review patterns.   

Our organisation values are designed to guide all that we do. 

Bold: Act with ambition, courage and determination   

Credible: Act with rigour and professionalism    

Human: Act to have a positive impact on people   

Together: Act inclusively and collaboratively 

We’re looking for people who can believe in and embody these organisation values and can use them to drive forward progress against our mission to beat cancer. 

If you’re interested in applying and excited about working with us but are unsure if you have the right skills and experience we’d still love to hear from you.

Our vision is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in, the work we do. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures, in particular those from ethnic minority backgrounds who are currently under-represented.

We want to see every candidate performing at their best throughout the job application process, interview process and whilst at work. We therefore ask you to inform us of any concerns you have or any adjustments you might need to enable this to happen. Please contact recruitment@cancer.org.uk or 020 3469 8400 as soon as possible. 

Unfortunately, we are unable to recruit anyone below the age of 18, so that we can protect young people from health & safety and safeguarding risks.