Job Description:

QA Test Engineer – Full-time, Permanent

Location: Poole, Dorset (4 days per week onsite)

Salary: £35-40,000 per annum, negotiable depending on experience, plus benefits

The Opportunity:

If you work in QA, you may know how frustrating it is to be brought in at the end of a project, handed a release, and expected to find everything that could go wrong without having had the opportunity to influence it earlier.

This role offers something more involving.

You’ll join an established software company that is investing in modern development tools and testing approaches. Working closely with developers, product specialists and DevOps throughout the Agile delivery cycle, you’ll help shape test coverage, identify risks, and improve how quality is built into complex software. Not simply check it at the end.

The work spans web, mobile and API-based applications, combining thoughtful manual and exploratory testing with automation. With varied projects, technically interesting problems, and software used at scale, this is an opportunity to keep learning while making a visible contribution to the reliability, security and performance of the product.

Why This Role Stands Out:

• Salary is competitive and negotiable, up to around £40,000 per annum depending on experience
• Annual salary reviews with regular market benchmarking
• Hybrid working – 1 day per week remote from home
• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Pension scheme with employer contribution and matched enhancements
• Health Cash Plan including 24/7 GP access, dental and optical cover
• Death in Service cover (4x salary)
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Paid volunteering days
• Discretionary bonus
• Comfortable, modern open-plan office
• Team and company social events
• Autonomy, trust and long-term career progression
• Structured training and development opportunities to help you grow
• Supportive, team-focused culture that values your ideas and achievements

Why This QA Test Engineer Role May Appeal

• Quality is treated as a shared responsibility, with close collaboration across QA, development, product and DevOps.
• You’ll work across manual, exploratory and automated testing rather than being confined to repetitive regression testing.
• The company has ambitious plans to modernise its development tools and testing approaches, giving you scope to contribute ideas and improve how things are done.
• Projects vary, so you’ll gain exposure to different technical challenges across web, mobile, APIs, databases and cloud-based environments.
• You’ll be trusted to investigate problems properly, communicate risk clearly, and follow defects through to resolution.
• Structured training, development and long-term career progression will support you in expanding your technical capability.
• You’ll join a stable, growing business with a supportive culture that recognises ideas, initiative and achievement.

What You Need:

• A strong understanding of QA methodologies and the software testing lifecycle.
• Hands-on experience of both manual and automated testing across web, mobile and/or API environments.
• The ability to create structured test cases and communicate defects and test outcomes clearly.
• Experience managing test plans and defects within a modern software development workflow.
• SQL knowledge for database validation and testing.
• Experience working within an Agile or Scrum environment.
• Familiarity with tools or technologies such as Jira, Postman, Selenium and AWS would be useful.

You don’t need to match every preferred technology listed above. If you have strong testing fundamentals, an investigative mindset and the appetite to broaden your skills, the company would still be interested in hearing from you.

Why You Should Apply:

If you enjoy investigating the unexpected, asking the questions others may miss, and helping teams release software with greater confidence, this could be an interesting next move for you.

Apply now or contact me for a confidential, no-pressure conversation to find out more.

We welcome applications from neurodivergent candidates and are happy to discuss reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

Please note that telephone calls are scheduled by appointment only.