QA Engineer (Automation) - Software Engineering

About the role

Travis Perkins plc is looking for a QA Engineer (Automation) to join its Software Engineering team in Northampton, working on core enterprise systems and in-store retail trading platforms. The role is permanent and full-time, with a hybrid arrangement of 2-3 days per week in the office. Candidates should have practical exposure to AI and be curious about how it can improve QA and software engineering.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain a scalable automated testing framework for terminal-based interfaces (including Web Terminal) and modern web applications, and build regression suites covering retail trading journeys and core business processes.
• Automate and validate data flows between applications and connected systems, using REST APIs for test data creation, retrieval and validation.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines with scheduled and containerized execution, giving rapid feedback during development and after deployment.
• Work with Product Owners, developers, DevOps and third-party QA engineers to turn business processes into test scenarios and maintainable automation, and partner with external QA providers on standards and knowledge sharing.
• Explore AI tools to improve test generation, script optimisation, test data creation, failure analysis, defect triage and documentation.
• Shift left by working with developers early on risks and acceptance criteria, investigate test failures and production incidents, and promote reusable automation and secure practices while monitoring coverage, execution time and reliability.

Required profile

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong background in quality engineering with hands-on experience building automated test frameworks.
• Desirable: experience testing retail, branch trading, cash operations, transactional systems or order lifecycle workflows; familiarity with terminal emulation or green-screen interfaces; experience with ERP, middleware, PIM or digital platforms; ISTQB or equivalent certification.

Required skills

• Programming/scripting, ideally TypeScript or JavaScript.
• End-to-end testing tools, Page Object Models and asynchronous test handling.
• API testing with REST APIs, Postman or equivalent.
• CI/CD pipelines and automated execution.
• Desirable: reporting tools such as Allure, cloud-based or containerised test environments, and AI coding assistants or AI-powered testing tools.