Head of Quality Engineering

Who we're looking for

We're after an experienced senior test engineer and team lead/people manager to help lead our software development "shift left" transition. This includes helping set the right test and development strategies for our diverse application estate, and also being a subject matter expert on building quality assurance into our continuous delivery pipelines.

You'll need to be versatile, and able to express your ideas clearly. And though you'll have serious senior support, you'll need to win people round quickly and help them get results.

 

About Schroders

We're a global investment manager. We help institutions, intermediaries and individuals around the world invest money to meet their goals, fulfil their ambitions, and prepare for the future.

We have around 5,000 people on six continents. And we've been around for over 200 years, but keep adapting as society and technology changes. What doesn't change is our commitment to helping our clients, and society, prosper.

 

Technology at Schroders

There's a huge amount of change going on at Schroders. Technology's shaping our business more and more, so there are many opportunities waiting to be grabbed.  And because we're a big financial player, we can put hefty backing behind good ideas.

We're a serious business – we have enormous responsibilities to our clients and shareholders. But just because we're suited and booted, that doesn't make us stuffy; our tech teams are friendlier and more informal than you might expect.

  

The base

We moved into our new HQ in the City of London in 2018. We're close to our clients, in the heart of the UK's financial centre. And we have everything we need to work flexibly.

 

The team

You'll be part of the Enterprise Engineering leadership team working closely with technology teams across the business, and with other areas within Enterprise Technology itself. Enterprise Engineering is one of the 5 main practices within Enterprise Technology and is responsible for the development of group wide engineering approaches, and how engineers develop and deliver quality solutions. The other areas of Enterprise Technology are architecture, cloud, data, and delivery practices, all of whom work together to focus on how we move Schroders technology and technology teams forwards.

 

What you'll do

• You will head up the Quality Engineering capability within Enterprise Technology, helping the Enterprise Technology management team set the right software development and test strategy for the organisation.  You will build and manage a team of software development engineers in test and deploy them into engineering teams across the enterprise

• You will develop and enhance our strategy to provide support for those software development teams who already build quality testing into their delivery pipelines, help software development teams with more traditional manual QA to shift left, while also improving the test stories for those teams who are not able to move away from manual testing or heavyweight test environments

• You will be instrumental in, over time, helping teams move from having manual testers to preferring software development engineers in test

• You'll use your extensive experience of implementing quality testing within software delivery pipelines to demonstrate "what good looks like", and offer guidance to teams as they progress on the shift-left journey

• You will use your experience and expertise to guide us in defining and curating test tooling frameworks and utilities

• You will also use your experience to guide us in defining the right metrics, so we can measure delivery improvements, the progress of our new test strategies, and also identify where we need to adjust our thinking

 

The knowledge, experience and qualifications you need

• A strong background in developing tests as part of the software delivery pipeline which give enough confidence to deliver software into production without manual testing

• A good understanding of what we should be measuring in order to demonstrate we are succeeding in improving the agility of our software delivery, or to highlight areas that need attention

• A very good understanding of Test Driven Development, the strategies that result in fast running, flexible test suites, and how TDD impacts the design of software

• A very good understanding of Behaviour Driven Development approaches, tool choices, techniques for achieving high functional test coverage, and how to make all this meaningfully tie back to the real business requirements

• A good understanding of how the shape of our requirements, features, and stories work together with all areas of testing to result in rapid delivery of features to users, maximising fast feedback

 

What you'll be like

• A good strategic thinker with excellent communication skills

• You'll really enjoy working across teams with many different people

• An approachable and collaborative coach, who listens and suggests, but also expects their own ideas to be informed by the suggestions of others

• Able to stand your ground without being confrontational

• Down-to-earth, honest, and straightforward

• Really interested in new test engineering approaches

 

We're looking for the best, whoever they are

Schroders is an equal opportunities employer. You're welcome here whatever your sex, marital status, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religious belief or age.