QA Engineer - Automation

QA Automation Engineer Contract: Six months Start date: 12 October 2026 Rate: Circa £400 per day, to be confirmed IR35 status: Expected to be outside IR35, subject to confirmation Working pattern: Tuesdays and Thursdays in the office, with three days working from home and flexibility for business needs Office location: To be confirmed We are seeking a hands-on QA Automation Engineer to support a housing association's in-flight reactive repairs system implementation. The project involves six prime contractors and up to 20 suppliers, connecting through a combination of APIs and a portal. You will help ensure integrations work correctly and information flows accurately from end to end, including financial transactions and contractor and supplier payments. Working alongside the QA Engineering Lead, you will strengthen test coverage, build and maintain automation, and produce clear, reliable evidence of system behaviour. There is significant work to complete, so you will need to get up to speed quickly, organise competing priorities and communicate issues proactively. What you'll do Build and maintain automated API, integration and regression tests, contributing to the project's test frameworks. Contribute to test plans and prepare structured test cases and test data, with clear expected results and traceability to requirements. Validate end-to-end journeys across the repairs system, contractor and supplier interfaces, and associated financial processes. Test successful journeys, failure paths and exception handling across API and portal connections. Use SQL to validate data, investigate discrepancies and support defect analysis. Execute functional tests and contribute to appropriate non-functional testing, including performance and resilience. Support user acceptance testing and implementation rehearsals, helping business users prepare scenarios, capture results and report issues. Review supplier test cases, scripts and results with the QA lead, identifying gaps in coverage or evidence. Log and track defects through resolution, collaborate on investigation, retest fixes and carry out regression testing. Report test progress, outcomes and outstanding risks clearly, providing evidence to support release and go-live decisions. Identify practical opportunities to improve automation, test efficiency and quality. Work within an Azure DevOps environment and collaborate with internal technical teams, business analysts, project managers, external vendors and the professional services implementation team. What you'll bring Proven hands-on QA experience, including testing SaaS or package-based business applications. Practical experience writing and maintaining automated tests and contributing to test frameworks. Strong API and integration testing skills across connected systems. Confident SQL skills for data validation and investigation. A sound understanding of functional, integration, regression, user acceptance and performance testing. Experience preparing test cases and test data, analysing results and producing reliable test evidence. Experience working collaboratively with third-party suppliers and internal delivery teams. Familiarity with Azure DevOps or comparable test management tools. Knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics 365, NEC Housing or similar enterprise platforms. A professional testing or quality assurance qualification, such as ISTQB. Strong organisational and communication skills, with the ability to manage several testing activities, explain risks clearly and challenge quality issues constructively. A dependable, inclusive approach and the ability to work effectively under pressure. Experience in housing, reactive repairs or comparable service delivery systems would be desirable. Experience testing financial interfaces, reconciliation or contractor and supplier payments would also be valuable. Relevant technical experience may include C#, Python, Postman, Selenium, Cypress or RSAT. The project's automation stack is being confirmed, so please highlight the languages, tools and frameworks you have used and your ability to adapt to an existing environment. This is an individual contributor role focused on hands-on testing and automation, working closely with the QA Engineering Lead. To apply, please submit your CV and confirm your availability for a 12 October start. send you CV to Laura at lramm@itecopeople.co.uk Services Advertised are those of an Employment Business