Senior Chapter Lead - QA

The main responsibility of a Senior Chapter Lead is to ensure the  right capabilities are being built within the  technical people in the Tribe, ensuring they are equipped  with the skills, tools, and standard approaches to deliver functional excellence, and ensuring that they are focused on delivering value to the business. The Senior Chapter lead takes responsibility for the line management of Chapter Leads within the tribes, acting as both a servant leader and coach for them and other technical people within the tribes.

Accountabilities

• Recruitment, development and retention of technical resources including career pathway development for all technical squad members.  
• Defining and setting compensation, benefits, and promotions for all members of the relevant Chapter.
• Providing and applying effective performance management processes and mechanisms supporting squad leaders and product owners in increasing squad performance.  
• Providing an inclusive environment where Chapter members have freedom and safety to innovate, experiment, and learn from failure.
• Accountable owner and role model for applying the following values: productivity, quality, transparency, and openness over internal politics into the Chapters ways of working and production of outcomes.  
• Providing open and effective communication channels leading to greater knowledge transfer within the Chapter. 
• Ensuring engineering, design and testing standards and practices comply with Admiral IT governance and architectural standards while performing in a heavily regulated environment.

Responsibilities

• Providing line management duties for Chapter Leads Squad technical members within the Tribe with a view to focussing on coaching and mentoring techniques that align to both agile principles and Admiral values.
• Technical resource recruitment, retention and overall onboarding process for all Squad level technical members of the relevant Chapter.
• Supporting both personal and technical skills development for all Squad level technical members enabling greater Squad operational performance.
• Providing effective career development for all Squad level technical members of the relevant Chapter.
• Effectively administrating Chapter member’s compensation, benefits and promotion processes.
• Enabling Squads to meet their expected outcomes by supporting them in problem identification, root cause analysis, and decision-making.
• Improving Squad performance by applying effective performance management controls leveraging input from relevant Squad Lead and Product Owners leading onto providing corrective actions when necessary.
• Identifying, teaching, or sponsor the required software and hardware engineering skills needed to support the development of high-quality code, components, systems, and solutions.
• Supporting all Chapter members in living the following values in everything they do: productivity, quality, transparency, and openness over internal politics.
• Serving as a senior coach and advisor to Agile Squads. Remaining close enough to the Squads to add value and to be a competent manager, while staying far enough away to let them problem-solve on their own.
• Responsible for supporting Delivery Leads and Product Leads in knowledge transition between both Squads and the wider Organisation by applying clear and concise communication channels.
• Supports the Heads of Capability/IT with Identifying, tracking, removing and escalating technical impediments and blockers at Tribe level.
• Supports the Heads of Capability with the development of technical roadmap plans, resource plans, forecasts future resource requirements, working with Chapter Leads to agree future resourcing strategies.
• Assisting Tribe Product Leads by ensuring activities align with strategic objectives.

Key Interactions

• Regular 1 to 1s with Chapter Leads.
• Performance reviews aligned to Cornerstone.
• Close relationship with Tribe leadership focussing on understanding the development needs of their people.
• Participate in quarterly Portfolio Sync and weekly Portfolio checkpoint sessions and support teams by helping them remove systemic impediments.
• Help protect teams from distractions and unrelated or unnecessary work.
• Work with APMO to establish and monitor staffing needs.

Knowledge and Experience Required

• Extensive knowledge of customer experience (CX) interaction and integration as part of software development process (can be through scrum/ lean agile or standard SDLC).
• Extensive knowledge and experience with Line management through both coaching and mentoring techniques.
• Knowledge and experience in Scrum development practices, using associated tools for testing and continuous integration & deployment.
• (Domain Expert) - Extensive knowledge and experience with design & development of: Testing and Test Automation with Java/Python, Selenium, BDD and Data Driven Testing with ISTQB or equivalent qualification.
• Knowledge of identification and management of specific engineering, design and testing standards and practices that comply with internal organisation IT governance and architectural standards while performing within a heavily regulated environment.
• Knowledge and experience in the use of tools such as: Jira, Confluence etc.

Interview Process

This will be a three-stage process and will consist of one 60-minute compentency based interview, one presentation and one final chat with our Chief Engineer, Pankaj Kane.

Location

For Hybrid workers (within a 50-mile radius of our Cardiff HQ) there is an expectation to work from the office twice a month.  For remote workers (outside of a 50-mile radius of our Cardiff HQ) there is an expectation to attend the office a handful of times a year when required (i.e big meetings, workshops etc).

Salary, Benefits, and Work-Life Balance

We do not have a set salary for this position, as it will be dependent on the successful candidate’s experience. We are happy to see CVs from all candidates who meet the requirements and will be happy to discuss the remuneration package.

At Admiral, we are proud to be a diverse business where we put our people and customers first. We have great benefits to ensure employees have a great work-life balance; it's one of the reasons we’re consistently voted one of the Sunday Times Best Big Companies to work for in the UK. We want you to have an element of freedom to define a working lifestyle that supports this, so accommodate flexible hours wherever possible.

All colleagues will receive 33 days holiday (including banks holidays) when they join us, and this will increase with length of service, up to a maximum of 38 days (including banks holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to five days of annual leave in addition to your allocation.

For Hybrid workers (within a 50-mile radius of our Cardiff HQ) there is an expectation to work from the office twice a month.  For remote workers (outside of a 50-mile radius of our Cardiff HQ) there is an expectation to attend the office a handful of times a year when required (i.e big meetings, workshops etc).

You can also view some of our other key benefits here.

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