Head of Quality Engineering

Location: WFH or Hybrid

Salary: Negotiable

Large-Scale Distributed Systems | TDD | BDD | Clean Code

We are looking for an accomplished Head of Quality Engineering to lead the quality strategy for a highly complex, technology-led organisation operating at significant scale.

This is a senior leadership opportunity for someone who sees quality as an engineering discipline - not simply a final stage of delivery. You will work alongside highly experienced Software Engineers, QA/Test Engineers and Cloud specialists, creating an environment in which quality, resilience and testability are embedded throughout the development lifecycle.

The opportunity

You will take ownership of the organisation’s quality engineering strategy, leading the continued evolution of its people, practices, tooling and automation capabilities.

Operating across large, complex and distributed systems, you will help engineering teams deliver reliable, scalable and maintainable software while promoting modern practices including Test-Driven Development, Behaviour-Driven Development and Clean Code.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Defining and delivering the overall quality engineering strategy.

• Leading, mentoring and developing experienced QA and Quality Engineering teams.

• Embedding quality throughout the software development lifecycle.

• Working closely with senior leaders across Software Engineering, Cloud, Platform and Product.

• Advancing test automation across application, API, integration and infrastructure layers.

• Establishing effective approaches to performance, resilience, security and non-functional testing.

• Promoting TDD, BDD, Clean Code and continuous testing practices.

• Improving quality engineering within CI/CD pipelines and cloud-native environments.

• Defining meaningful quality metrics, engineering standards and governance.

• Supporting teams responsible for highly available, business-critical distributed platforms.

• Challenging existing practices and introducing pragmatic, scalable improvements.

About you

You will already be operating at Head of Quality Engineering or Quality Engineering Director leadership level within a technically sophisticated organisation.

You should bring:

• Significant experience working with large, complex or distributed systems.

• A strong technical understanding of modern software engineering and testing practices.

• Experience leading highly capable Quality Engineers, SDETs or QA Automation Engineers.

• A track record of working alongside experienced Development, QA, Cloud and Platform engineering teams.

• Strong knowledge of TDD, BDD, Clean Code and shift-left quality practices.

• Experience developing enterprise-level automation and continuous testing strategies.

• Good knowledge of cloud platforms, microservices, APIs and CI/CD environments.

• An understanding of performance, reliability, resilience and observability.

• The ability to influence senior technical stakeholders and establish quality as a shared engineering responsibility.

• A leadership style that combines strategic direction with genuine technical credibility.

This is an excellent opportunity to shape quality engineering across a sophisticated technology environment, working with exceptional engineers on platforms where scalability, resilience and engineering excellence genuinely matter.

If you are a progressive Quality Engineering leader who wants to influence technology strategy and establish world-class engineering practices, we would be delighted to speak with you.

Please reach out to cv@franklinbates.com to apply for consideration.