Test Engineering Lead

• Lead quality engineering across a business domain, embedding quality from design through to release
• Play a key role in building modern quality engineering capability and practices
• Hybrid 80% homeworking and 20% from Stratford upon Avon

About the role

About the role

Join NFU Mutual as we build a new Centre of Excellence for Quality Engineering. You'll have the opportunity to help transform how quality is delivered across the full development lifecycle, elevating testing to a more integrated, proactive discipline. Working closely with our engineering and product teams, you'll play a key role in delivering better outcomes for our customers. This is a rare opportunity to make a genuine impact while helping shape a team and function that's still evolving

This is a senior leadership opportunity to lead the execution of the quality engineering strategy within a defined domain. You'll ensure that quality is embedded throughout the full product lifecycle, helping to improve delivery confidence and support the shift to a product led operating model.

Working within IT, you will partner closely with product, delivery and business stakeholders. You'll act as the primary quality engineering contact, collaborating with developers, product owners, subject matter experts and DevOps teams to ensure quality is built into delivery rather than assessed at the end.

Using metrics and insight to assess product quality health and drive continuous improvement. This includes leading the adoption of modern practices such as automation first testing, shift left approaches and continuous integration and delivery.

You'll also play a key role in shaping standards, frameworks and governance. You'll lead quality risk assessments, ensuring approaches consider regulatory requirements, product risk and customer impact. Alongside this, you'll lead and develop a blended team of permanent and third-party colleagues, building a high performing and inclusive quality engineering community.

This role is based in Stratford upon Avon with a hybrid working pattern of 80% homeworking and 20% office based. Internally this role is called Quality Engineering leader.

About you

You're an experienced Test Engineering Leader ideally from within a regulated environment, with a strong track record of delivering high-quality outcomes across complex technology environments. You bring a strategic mindset alongside the ability to embed practical improvements within delivery teams. Alongside your technical expertise, you're a collaborative and influential leader, able to build strong relationships across business and technology teams, coach and develop others, and drive alignment to achieve common goals. You apply critical thinking and a proactive, problem-solving approach to navigate complexity, lead change and continuously improve quality outcomes.

You'll also bring (essentials)

• Significant experience leading quality engineering teams and services, including ownership of test strategy and end to end product quality
  • Strong knowledge of modern quality engineering practices, including automation led approaches, shift left and CI CD in agile or DevOps environments
  • Proven ability to use data, metrics and insight to drive decision making and improve product performance
  • Experience managing third party suppliers and optimising resource models to deliver value and quality
  • Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to influence across business and technical teams

At NFU Mutual, we support an inclusive workplace and value all the differences that make us unique. We celebrate the creativity and innovation that comes from diverse perspectives and experiences and share a common vision of doing the right thing for our customers and employees.

We recognise that some candidates may experience barriers during the recruitment process. So, we encourage candidates to discuss any adjustments or accommodations they need to be the best they can be throughout our recruitment process.

We're proud to be a Disability Confident Employer, a Race at Work and Women in Finance Charter signatory and welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, regardless of age, ethnicity, disability, neurodiversity, gender, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic background.

Benefits and Rewards

When you join our team, you can expect a supportive culture and an attractive range of rewards and benefits including:

• Salary - £75,000 - £85,000 DOE
• Annual bonus (up to 25% of salary)
• Contributory pension scheme, up to 20%, including your 8% contribution
• 28 days annual leave + bank holidays + buy/sell/save holiday trading scheme
• A Family Friendly policy that helps you balance your work and family responsibilities
• Private medical insurance + options to add family members
• Access to savings at High Street brands, travel and supermarkets
• £20 contribution to a monthly gym membership - subject to T&Cs
• Health and wellbeing plan - cashback for dentist, opticians, physio and more
• Employee Volunteering - volunteer in the community for one day each year
• Unlimited access to Refer a Friend £500 bonus scheme
• Life Assurance cover of 4 x salary
• Employee discounts of 15% on a range of NFU Mutual insurance policies.
• Salary sacrifice employee car scheme - subject to eligibility

Working at NFU Mutual

We're one of the UK's leading general insurance and financial services organisations, and for over 110 years we've put our customers at the heart of everything we do. Our people are just as important to us, so we're proud to be recognised as "a great place to work".

Our Gallup Exceptional Workplace 2026 award was not only awarded with Distinction, but it also marked us as the first UK based company to earn a Gallup Exceptional Workplace award for eleven consecutive years. We've also been consistently recognised by Glassdoor. We appeared in the Glassdoor Best Places to Work UK list in 2023, 2024 and 2026 - and in 2026, we were the highest ranked insurance business in the UK, highlighting our strong employee experience and the positive feedback our people share on the platform.

Additionally, we were named in the LinkedIn Top Companies 2026 list of "Best midsize employers to grow your career in the UK", and we've been certified as a UK Top Employer by the Top Employers Institute in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.
We offer a supportive and empowering culture where people are inspired to perform, given opportunities to grow, and recognised and rewarded for their contribution. Our people are proud to work for a company that respects them and their communities, and they trust us to be financially sustainable-so we're successful now and in the future.