Chapter Lead - (QA)

The Chapter Lead for Test Automation Engineering is a pivotal leadership role within Admiral IT. This role is responsible for building technical capabilities, driving functional excellence, and ensuring value delivery across squads. The Chapter Lead combines technical expertise with people leadership, focusing on recruitment, development, and retention of engineering talent, while also leading strategic initiatives and fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration.

Main Duties

Leadership

• Provide line management and career development for all technical squad members within the Chapter.
• Define and manage compensation, benefits, and promotion processes.
• Apply effective performance management mechanisms to support squad leaders and product owners.
• Create an inclusive environment that encourages innovation, experimentation, and learning from failure.
• Champion values of productivity, quality, transparency, and openness across Chapter operations.
• Ensure compliance with Admiral IT governance and architectural standards.
• Serve as a senior coach and advisor to Agile squads, balancing proximity for support with autonomy for problem-solving.

Implementation & Delivery

• Support squads in identifying problems, conducting root cause analysis, and making informed decisions.
• Drive technical improvements in testing, including automation and integration strategies.
• Sponsor and teach required software and hardware engineering skills to support high quality development.
• Lead initiatives to improve squad performance through effective controls and corrective actions.
• Participate in portfolio syncs and checkpoints to remove systemic impediments and support delivery.

Collaboration & Communication

• Establish open and effective communication channels to facilitate knowledge transfer within the Chapter.
• Support squad leads and product owners in transitioning knowledge across squads and the wider organization.
• Form close relationships with leadership to understand development needs and improve culture.
• Protect teams from distractions and unrelated work, enabling focus on delivery.

Experience Required

Technical Expertise

• Extensive experience in testing large-scale web applications using automation techniques.
• Proficiency in writing and maintaining automated tests using Playwright, JavaScript/TypeScript and mocking techniques and tooling.
• Experience with version control systems such as GIT or SVN.
• Exposure to CI/CD tools like Azure DevOps or Jenkins.
• Experience in designing and implementing integration, security, performance, accessibility and operational testing.
• Hands-on experience with API test tooling (Postman, Node-Fetch), contract and integration testing using mocking techniques and tooling.
• Knowledge of Jira and Confluence for project and documentation management.

Desirable Skills

• Experience in BDD (Gherkin), Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (Azure/AWS).
• Awareness of Guidewire products such as Policy Centre, Billing Centre, and Customer Engage Digital suite.

Behavioural Competencies

• Strong coaching and mentoring capabilities aligned with agile principles.
• Ability to foster a culture of continuous improvement and high performance.
• Strategic thinking and decision-making in a regulated environment.
• Commitment to Admiral values including productivity, quality, transparency, and openness.

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We’re committed to fostering a people-first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service.

Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave.

We’re proud of our people-first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We’re fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics.

Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work-life balance; You can view some of our other key benefits here.

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