Lead Test Engineer
- 15/05/2024
- £53,352.00 - £62,898.00 /yearly
- Part Time & Permanent
Job expired!
Job Overview
Additional Detail
Job Description
ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations in London, Newport, Titchfield (Fareham) or Manchester, and working between office and remote throughout the week.
As part of the hybrid working arrangement there is 40% a minimum office attendance requirement. Attendance is typically at your contractual office, with occasional travel to alternative locations. Due to estates constraints, there are currently temporary exceptions to this for colleagues based at Manchester who are required to attend the office for a minimum of 20% of their work time.
Job summary
Are you an experienced Test Engineer looking for a role where you can make a real impact, using your technical experience to enable us to deliver our Statistics for the Public Good strategy for the UK?
We are looking for a Lead Test Engineer where you will help drive forward a package of organisational change and capability, building activities designed to grow the sustainability, quality and reach of the test services offered by ONS.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UKs largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social, and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.
Job description
A Lead test engineer undertakes activity including shaping requirements, the planning, design, creation, execution and results analysis of non-functional and functional testing activities, through an automation first approach to testing, spanning a number of major projects at ONS.
They define and deploy suitable test methods as part of a broader risk-based approach. As a Test Engineer, you will be responsible for the design and delivery of system, system integration, E2E and acceptance testing frameworks and activities, through an automation first approach to testing, spanning a number of major projects at ONS.
You will work with a variety of operational users, third party suppliers and in-house development teams and develop effective working relationships with each.
Your responsibility will be for a range of test activities. These include test harness design, test automation, writing, debugging, and refactoring test code, adapting approaches and frameworks appropriately and in line with any changes, business, and end user needs.
Responsibilities:
- Promote the use of opensource tools.
- Proficient in multiple test scripting languages.
- Have a presence in external test communities and regularly share learning.
- Work closely with leads across the Government Digital and Data Profession to champion quality.
- Guide test team members to design test strategies (which may involve more complex and larger scale delivery).
- Manage communications between test and projects to support the control of integrations and dependencies.
- Enable delivery of QAT functional services for programmes and projects by working closely with software developers to reach a collective understanding of system architecture, system functionality and business requirements, leading to the required test coverage at unit,system, integration, E2E and project/business level.
- Understand and bring together both functional and non-functional requirements of an application, enabling complex and meaningful testing for projects to be executed in a consistent way.
- Effectively communicate with projects and business stakeholders to support the control of integrations, dependencies, and risks.
- Source, collect and extract data that is accurate and fit for purpose, working with developers to configure, test and update configurations.
- Working with the wider ONS testing teams and ONS testing communities to ensure that the latest testing approaches are adopted across ONS.
In addition to the responsibilities as the lead test engineer, you will write new automation test frameworks based on project requirements.
- Own existing frameworks and actively reviewing them, identifying need for new tools & frameworks, and delivering these at scale.
- Help to solve the technical challenges that team may require assistance with, evaluating efficacy of test engineering processes across the projects and suggesting improvements.
- Promoting convergence, crafting shared capabilities and data driven approaches within test engineering.
- Embrace innovation evaluating tools and recommending approaches that can benefit testing. Enabling detailed, real-time reports of automated test runs.
- Manage test infrastructure usage and selecting approach to running distributed, parallel tests. Using container, cloud technology to orchestrate faster, scalable tests while optimising costs.
- Work with teams to promote use of test engineering solutions, accessibility testing etc.
Person specification
Essential Skills Criteria:
- Functional testing (Expert): You can act as a champion for and apply an automation first testing approach advising on up-to-functional testing techniques. Including creating new test approaches for major projects.
- Non functional testing (Expert): You can act as a champion for and apply an automation first testing approach to non-functional testing. Applying Sustainable testing approaches to major projects to measure performance of of software and solutions.
- Technical breadth (Expert): Demonstrate knowledge of emerging tools and techniques that can be applied to a range of major projects at ONS to meet bespoke project needs, tooling, cloud applications and software languages.
- Test Analysis (Practitioner): You can investigative problems and opportunities in existing processes to create suitable automation test frameworks.
Technical Skills:
- Expert in at least one programming language (Java/JavaScript/C#/Python) to create test automation frameworks.
- Expertise in the use of testing tools for example Selenium/Cypress/Playwright for UI (User Interface), Postman/RestAssured for API testing and using tools for CI/CD like Git, Jenkins, BrowserStack etc.
- Experienced in BDD/TDD style of script development.
- Ability to develop performance test scripts using tools like JMeter/Gatling/LoadRunner etc and able to read, interpret and articulate performance reports (Grafana/Dynatrace/Prometheus).
- You can act as an advisor with strategic understanding of IT trends and technologies for testing.
Further information about skill levels for the Government Digital and Data roles available on Government Digital and Data pages of www.gov.uk
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Working Together
- Communicating and Influencing
- Managing a Quality Service
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Test automation creation
- Performance testing
- Use of Code and new testing techniques to deliver a service
Alongside your salary of £53,352, Office for National Statistics contributes £14,405 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our 5400 valued colleagues across the business.
This role is part of the cross-government Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) profession framework. As a role within Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) at the ONS, we also offer benefits such as:
Protected Learning Time to spend on your personal development and side-projects.
A supportive and active Community of Practice which you will be expected to contribute to, helping ensure you and your colleagues get the training, development and opportunities you need to progress your careers.
ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time, in a job share or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.
Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that the benefits pack attached (bottom of page) will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues and our fantastic working culture.
Inclusion & Accessibility
At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a member of the Business Disability Forum and a Disability Confident Leader were committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.
As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.
If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
Security Clearance
The requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying.
A lack of UK residency in itself is not always a bar to security clearance but the Department will need to consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.
At the point of SC application you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:
- Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
- Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
- Security Services records.
Applicant support
The ONS regularly run webinars and support sessions for candidates. You can find details on all our upcoming webinars on our Eventbrite page.
Applicants may utilise AI resources in their submissions; ensuring all information provided is factually accurate, truthful, and original, avoiding any form of plagiarism to maintain the authenticity and credibility of the application process.
Stage 1 Application & Sift
Assessment at application stage will be based on your work history, skills, experience, CV and personal statement.
Your application should be tailored to demonstrate any skills, knowledge and experience that are relevant to the content of the role.
Your personal statement should be no longer than 1250 words. You should use this space to provide evidence for each of the essential skills criteria within the person specification. As the criteria are scored, we would recommend that you give clear examples for each including the impact of your actions and set them out using the STAR acronym (Situation, Task, Action, Result).
Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage.
In cases where there are a high number of applications the sift pass mark may be adjusted and candidates will be invited to interview in merit order, i.e. those scoring the highest.
Stage 2 Interview
Should you be invited to interview, you will be assessed using various assessment techniques aligned to the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, where you'll be assessed against all the behaviours and the technical skills outlined in the advert.
A presentation will be required at interview this will be aligned to technical skills. Further information will be provided to successful candidates prior to interview.
Interviews will be conducted by Video Conference.
A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.
Important Dates:
Sift dates: From 24/05/2024
Interview dates: From 05/06/2024
For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment below.
Test Engineer role profile attached also for more information.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).
See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality requirements
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Government Digital and Data Recruitment Team
- Email : [email protected]
Recruitment team
- Email : [email protected]
Further information
If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact [email protected]. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission