Lead Test Automation Engineer
About Inspiretec
Inspiretec delivers enterprise-scale travel technology platforms serving some of the largest leisure travel operators in the UK. Our end-to-end solutions — spanning reservations, CRM and digital customer engagement — support high transaction volumes, complex integrations and business-critical journeys, particularly during peak booking periods.
Our platform operates in a highly connected ecosystem, integrating with multiple third-party systems, suppliers and data sources. Reliability, performance and release confidence are critical to the businesses we support.
As we continue to scale, we are strengthening Quality Engineering as a core discipline to enable faster, safer and more predictable delivery across our enterprise platform.
The Opportunity
We are looking for a hands-on Lead Test Automation Engineer to take ownership of Inspiretec’s automation, integration and performance testing capability.
We have established a foundation in UI automation using Playwright, alongside early-stage API automation investment. This role will lead the next stage of maturity: improving coverage, increasing reliability, reducing manual testing effort, and embedding automation as a standard part of how we deliver software.
A key strategic priority for Inspiretec is to increase delivery cadence without increasing risk. This role will be central to achieving that — enabling more frequent releases through robust automation, repeatable integration testing approaches, and performance testing that reflects real-world demand.
This is a leadership role with genuine influence. You will set standards, drive adoption across teams, and grow a sustainable quality engineering capability through a combination of hiring, mentoring and upskilling.
Key Responsibilities
Strategy & Ownership
- Own and evolve Inspiretec’s automation and performance testing strategy
- Increase automation coverage across both new feature development and regression suites
- Reduce manual testing effort across delivery teams
- Embed automation within the development lifecycle (Definition of Done, PR validation, CI/CD quality gates)
- Establish a clear strategy for testing complex third-party integrations
- Implement approaches where full test environments may not exist (mocking, stubbing, service virtualisation)
- Define and implement a reliable, scalable test data management strategy
- Align quality metrics with deployment frequency, defect escape rates and manual effort reduction
Hands-On Engineering
- Design, build and maintain scalable automation frameworks (Playwright and supporting tooling)
- Deliver automated testing across:
- Functional UI
- API and microservices
- Integration
- End-to-End
- Regression
- Mature API automation using frameworks such as Karate or equivalent
- Lead performance and load testing initiatives (e.g. JMeter or similar)
- Design realistic load models reflecting peak booking and high-traffic scenarios
- Improve reliability, reduce test flakiness and enhance reporting
Leadership, Adoption & Capability Building
- Establish and promote best practices, standards and reusable assets across teams
- Mentor engineers and provide hands-on coaching in automation and quality engineering
- Support recruitment of automation specialists where required
- Identify opportunities to retrain and upskill existing employees in automation practices
- Drive adoption of automation across delivery teams and ensure it is sustained over time
- Promote quality as a shared engineering responsibility across engineering and product
AI & Acceleration
- Evaluate and introduce AI-assisted approaches to accelerate test creation and maintenance
- Use intelligent tooling for coverage analysis, impact assessment and defect trend insights
- Apply AI pragmatically to improve feedback speed and reduce manual effort (without compromising reliability)
What We’re Looking For
Essential
- Strong hands-on automation engineering experience in complex, distributed systems
- Proven experience building and scaling automation frameworks (beyond scripting)
- Strong experience with modern UI automation tooling (e.g. Playwright, Cypress or similar)
- Strong API test automation experience (Karate or equivalent frameworks)
- Strong programming skills aligned to a .NET-first environment:
- C# (.NET) and/or TypeScript/JavaScript
- Proven performance/load testing experience (JMeter, LoadRunner or similar)
- Experience designing integration testing strategies for systems with external dependencies
- Experience implementing effective test data management approaches
- Experience embedding automation into CI/CD pipelines
- Experience mentoring engineers and influencing engineering standards
Desirable
- Experience with service virtualisation or API mocking tools
- Experience working in integration-heavy enterprise platforms
- Security testing exposure
- Consultancy or multi-stakeholder delivery experience
- Experience applying AI tools within software engineering workflows
Why Join Inspiretec?
- A high-impact leadership role with genuine influence and autonomy
- The opportunity to shape quality engineering across an enterprise platform
- Complex, integration-heavy systems where automation and strategy truly matter
- Hybrid working from Cardiff or fully remote within the UK
- Competitive salary and benefits
- A collaborative, forward-thinking engineering culture