Lead Test Automation Engineer

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.

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.

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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)

• 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

• 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

• 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