Senior QA Engineer

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About Us

We are Lightfoot, a high-growth technology company based just outside Exeter that is focused on making a difference worldwide, one driver at a time. We help businesses and private motorists improve efficiency and safety.

Our technology has been proven to reduce fuel use and emissions rates by 10-20%, and at-fault accidents and wear and tear by 40-50%. It connects to your vehicle's on-board computer and uses all the live data it produces to analyse how efficiently you are driving. It's similar to how performance is analysed in Formula 1. Lightfoot turns that data into simple feedback for you - the driver - so you know when you're pushing your vehicle too far and can bring it back to maximum efficiency. Beyond the vehicle, our proprietary gamification platform engages users via our app, giving our driver community the opportunity to engage in their performance and to win weekly cash prizes and rewards for achieving Elite Driver standard. Our solutions are highly differentiated from the competition which has helped us secure circa 300 of the UK's largest fleet customers including Tesco, Asda, Southwest Water, Iceland and Virgin Media to name a few.

More recently, we've started leveraging our gamification IP to expand our product offering to beyond drivers. With our new app-only solution we can now incentivise and reward all sorts of measurable behaviours for our customers, from physical activity to online order picking. We've given away nearly £2m in prize money incentivising and rewarding desirable behaviours and are excited about the value this can bring to our customer and to our growth prospects.

We're a fun-loving bunch who are growing at an astonishing rate. We've moved into a state-of-the-art office near Exeter in the beautiful Southwest (which was voted Exeter's 'Best Workspace'). We are excited to keep growing the Lightfoot family with like-minded, passionate individuals who share our values:

We care deeply | We are innovative | We deliver excellence |

We are customer first | We are friendly and celebrate individuality

About the role

We are seeking a dynamic and experienced Senior Senior QA Engineer to join our team. As the first dedicated QA professional, you will be responsible for establishing and evolving our quality assurance practices, working closely with development teams to ensure high-quality product delivery.

This is a hands-on role where you'll be directly involved in testing, while also building out the QA function, driving automation, and advocating for best practices across the software development lifecycle.

You will play a pivotal role in shifting QA "left" by integrating quality checks early in the development process, ensuring continuous improvement in our release cycles, and driving a culture of quality throughout the company.

Key duties and responsibilities

• Establish QA Processes: Design, implement, and scale QA processes and best practices from scratch to ensure high-quality product releases.
• Hands-on Testing: Perform hands-on testing, including functional, regression, integration, performance, and exploratory testing, to validate product functionality and stability.
• Test Automation: Build and maintain automated test frameworks and suites to support continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) pipelines.
• Push Left on QA: Collaborate with software engineers early in the development process to ensure quality is built into the product from day one.
• Team Leadership: Over time, grow and lead a high-performing QA team, mentoring junior QA engineers and fostering a culture of quality and collaboration.
• Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, developers, and DevOps teams to ensure clear communication and understanding of QA goals, timelines, and requirements.
• Defect Management: Own and manage the defect lifecycle, from identifying and reporting issues to working with development teams on swift resolutions.
• Performance and Scalability Testing: Implement performance testing strategies to ensure that our applications meet scalability and performance standards.
• Documentation: Create and maintain clear documentation for test cases, QA processes, and defect management protocols.

Key skills and experience

• Experience: 5+ years of hands-on experience in QA, with at least 2 years in a lead or senior role where you helped establish or scale QA functions.
• Testing Expertise: Proven experience in manual testing, automation frameworks for web and mobile (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, or similar), and performance testing tools.
• Automation Skills: Strong proficiency in building and maintaining automated test suites for web, mobile, and API testing.
• Shift Left Experience: Demonstrated ability to work closely with development teams to shift QA "left" and integrate quality early in the development process.
• Collaboration: Experience working in cross-functional teams in an Agile environment with developers, DevOps, and product teams.
• Technical Acumen: Solid understanding of software development, testing methodologies, and CI/CD practices. Knowledge of version control (e.g., Git) and build tools.
• Problem-Solving: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a detail-oriented approach to identifying issues.
• Leadership: Experience mentoring or leading QA professionals and building a collaborative, high-performance QA culture.

Preferred Qualifications

• Programming Skills: Familiarity with scripting or programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, JavaScript) to contribute to automation efforts.
• Cloud Experience: Experience testing in cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Azure) and familiarity with microservices architecture.
• Security Testing: Knowledge of security testing practices to ensure compliance with security requirements.
• ISTQB Certification: Certification in software testing or quality assurance (e.g., ISTQB).

Benefits

• Annual bonus scheme
• 24 days of annual leave (plus bank holidays)
• Birthday leave - an extra day off to celebrate
• End-of-year company closure between 25 Dec & 02 Jan
• Holiday buy-back scheme - the opportunity to buy up to an extra week's leave per annum
• Company sick pay
• Bravo benefits including
• -cycle-to-work scheme
• -financial wellbeing resources
• -gym discounts
• -MyMindPal app
• -retail discount scheme
• -tech benefits
• Simplyhealth Optimise health plan
• Simplyhealth Denplan dental plan
• Group life insurance (death-in-service)
• Company pension
• Long service awards
• Refer-A-Friend scheme
• Hybrid working
• On-site parking
• Casual dress
• Company social events and activities
• A personal Lightfoot device