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hackajob is partnering with Sainsbury's Tech to fill this position. Create a profile to be automatically considered for this role—and others that match your experience.
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Think about the scale it takes for us to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety it involves. Then you’ll realise that ours is a modern software engineering environment because it has to be. We’ve made serious investment into a Tech Academy and into setting standards and principles. We iterate, learn, experiment and push ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to awesome opportunities in everything from AI to reusable tech.
Senior QA Engineer | Sainsbury's Tech
Joining our team at Sainsbury's means being a part of an exceptionally dynamic and multi-faceted organisation that serves millions of customers daily. With the UK's largest loyalty scheme and cutting-edge digital platforms, we handle an astonishing 1.2 billion transactions each year, offering a vast and intricate dataset that few can match. Accelerating retail media capabilities is a top priority for the Nectar and Media Agency business unit, with a focus on building a market-leading offering both onsite and offsite. This includes scaling agency partnerships and digitising in-store media through digital screens. Initiatives like Sainsbury’s Insights Platform (SIP) are unlocking new revenue streams by providing suppliers with valuable operational data and actionable insights, positioning Media Agency at the forefront of retail media and data innovation.
Join us and be part of a team that encourages innovation, values your expertise, and prioritises work-life balance while delivering exceptional results.
We use a variety of tech here and you need to be willing to pick up new tools and techniques. We’d also like you to be yourself — analytical, curious and unafraid to challenge the status quo. You’ll be a role model for best practices, championing a customer centric mindset and a passion for finding creative ways to solve problems, mentoring fellow engineers as a progressive member of the engineering community.
More about the role
Top Responsibilities:
Quality Ownership Beyond Squad Level
Drive accountability for quality across multiple teams, ensuring standards are upheld and outcomes align with business priorities.
Own the Quality Gate
Act as the decision-maker for release readiness (go/no-go), balancing risk and business impact.
Set Standards and Best Practices
Define and maintain testing standards, automation strategies, and quality benchmarks for the squad and wider teams.
Influence and Leadership
Lead practices like 3-Amigos, refinement sessions, and quality-focused ceremonies. Push back constructively when needed to protect quality.
Operate Across Teams
Collaborate beyond the squad to align quality goals with product, engineering, and business stakeholders.
Strategic Guidance Over Day-to-Day Execution
Provide direction and mentorship to QA engineers, focusing on guidance and influence rather than granular operational tasks.
Continuous Improvement
Champion process optimisation, automation adoption, and innovation to improve efficiency and quality.
Defect Management and Risk Analysis
Ensure robust defect classification, prioritisation, and root cause analysis to prevent leakage and improve user experience.
Communication and Reporting
Deliver clear, actionable insights on quality status, risks, and readiness to stakeholders.
Leadership Within the Squad
Balance hands-on involvement with strategic oversight, ensuring the squad meets quality objectives while contributing to cross-team initiatives.
More about you
You are a technical leader and influencer, passionate about quality and collaboration. You thrive in a fast-paced environment, balancing strategic impact with practical squad-level engagement.
Essential skills:
Proven experience leading QA teams and mentoring junior engineers.
Strong knowledge of test strategy, planning, and execution across functional, regression, integration, and performance testing.
Expertise in automation frameworks and scripting (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, Playwright or similar).
Solid understanding of software design, architecture, and best engineering practices.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines, cloud platforms, and infrastructure as code.
Ability to analyse and classify defects, manage defect leakage, and drive root cause analysis.
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical information to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Strong collaboration skills, working effectively with cross-functional teams.
Commitment to continuous improvement, process optimisation, and adoption of new tools and practices.
High level of accountability, ownership, and a customer-centric mindset.
Desirable skills:
Experience with Jira & Confluence for ticket/documentation support.
Good practical knowledge of frontend and backend tech stacks.
Experience of mentoring more junior QA / test engineer colleagues
We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:
Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.
Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.
Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.
hackajob is partnering with Sainsbury's Tech to fill this position. Create a profile to be automatically considered for this role—and others that match your experience.