Principal QA Engineer

Role:                                    Principal QA Engineer

Location:                             We operate a hybrid schedule, meaning 2-3 days a week in the office based at Thorpe Park, Leeds. 

Salary:                                 £ DOE plus extensive benefits

Contract type:                    Permanent

Employment type:             Full time/Part time

Working hours:                  We work on a core hours principle. Our core hours are 09:30 - 16:00; you can work around these to suit you!

Do you want to work for the nation’s largest online pharmacy ensuring excellence for all our patients? We’re a market leader in the pharmacy world, with 25 years’ experience, helping over 1.8 million patients in England manage their NHS prescriptions from request through to delivery.  We are Great Place to Work certified as we consider colleague experience a top priority every day, and as a certified B Corp we also meet high standards of social and environmental responsibility. Our people are fundamental to our success and ensuring we achieve our vision to be a world leading, patient-centric digital healthcare provider. We are committed to continuing to develop a positive, open and honest working environment for all.

Our tech teams keep us running 24/7 to make sure all our patients get world class service. To support that, this role may include participation in an out-of-hours rota as required by the business. We operate fair scheduling process as well as additional compensation for all on call periods.

The Principal QA Engineer will shape the technical foundations of quality across Pharmacy2U’s technology landscape. Operating across Agile squads, the role focuses on designing and owning modern automation frameworks, setting standards, and enabling teams to deliver high‑quality software at scale. As the most senior technical role within QA, this position drives an automation‑first, shift‑left culture, strengthens performance testing capability, and explores AI‑assisted approaches that improve quality, feedback speed, and engineering productivity.

Why you’ll love working with us

We believe great people deserve great support. That’s why we offer a benefits package designed to look after your health, finances, career and life outside work.

Financial security & rewards

·        Competitive contributory pension

·        Occupational sick pay

·        Long-service awards and refer-a-friend bonuses

·        Professional registration fees covered (GPhC, NMC, CIPD and more)

·        Cycle to Work and Green Car schemes (subject to eligibility)

Family-friendly

·        Enhanced maternity and paternity pay

·        Flexible hybrid working to help balance work and home life

Health & wellbeing

·        Private healthcare insurance at discounted rates (Aviva)

·        Employee Assistance Programme and in-house mental health support

·        Access to discounted gym memberships via Blue Light Card and benefits schemes

·        Regular health and wellbeing initiatives

Career growth

·        Strong commitment to CPD, training and professional development

Time off & flexibility

·        25 days’ annual leave, increasing with service

·        Buy and sell holiday scheme

Everyday perks & exclusive discounts

·        Blue Light Card and employee discount platform

·        Exclusive discounts at The Springs, Leeds

·        25% off health & beauty purchases

·        25% off Pharmacy2U Private Online Doctor services

Culture & community

·        Regular social events throughout the year

What you’ll be doing?

·        Designing and implementing automation frameworks across web, mobile, app, and API layers, including the architecture, tooling, and patterns squads build upon

·        Building and evolving performance testing practices using k6 to help teams understand system behaviour under load

·        Defining coding standards, contribution guidelines, and reusable patterns that make automated tests easier to write and maintain

·        Integrating automation and quality checks into CI/CD pipelines and embedding quality practices into day‑to‑day squad workflows

·        Exploring and introducing AI‑assisted testing and development approaches (such as Copilot or AI agents) where they meaningfully improve test development, debugging, or engineering productivity

·        Partnering with engineering teams to support strong unit and integration testing practices, while ensuring end‑to‑end journeys and critical patient flows are well covered

·        Introducing accessibility testing practices and automated accessibility checks into testing workflows

·        Influencing how quality is measured in production through observability, monitoring, and meaningful release health signals

·        Investigating complex issues across services, integrations, and environments using logs, monitoring, and debugging tools

·        Providing technical mentorship to QA Engineers and developers adopting modern testing practices

·        Helping shape quality gates and automated feedback loops that provide fast, reliable confidence without slowing delivery

·        Contributing actively to the QA Guild and Communities of Practice, sharing knowledge and supporting growth across the wider engineering function

·        Translating complex technical context into clear, accessible language for non‑technical leadership and contributing to capability and investment discussions alongside QA leadership

Who are we looking for?

·        Comfortable working with large codebases or monolithic repositories

·        Enjoys mentoring engineers and QA Engineers, with impact measured by how much the wider team improves

·        Comfortable influencing technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority and translating technical complexity for non‑technical leadership

·        Stays curious about industry direction and brings informed perspectives on emerging tools, frameworks, and approaches

·        Explored or implemented AI‑assisted testing and development approaches and can articulate what worked well and what did not

·        Cares about the end users of what is built, with a clear understanding that this means patients in this context

·        Brings extensive experience building automation frameworks for modern web, mobile, and API platforms

·        Deep coding experience, ideally in TypeScript or JavaScript

·        Hands‑on experience with Playwright, Cypress, or similar modern automation frameworks

·        Experience designing automation architecture for complex systems, not just writing automated tests Experience implementing performance testing strategies using k6 or similar tooling

·        Experience testing systems with multiple services, APIs, and third‑party integrations

·        Experience integrating automation into CI/CD pipelines and modern delivery workflows

·        Strong understanding of modern testing strategies, including unit, integration, and end‑to‑end approaches

·        Strong understanding of service‑based architectures, distributed systems, and modern web platforms

What happens next?

Please click apply and if we think you are a good match, we will be in touch to arrange an interview.

Applicants must prove they have the right to live in the UK.

All successful applicants will be required to undergo a DBS check.

Unsolicited agency applications will be treated as a gift.

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