Lead Quality Assurance Engineer

Lead QA Engineer — Life Sciences SaaS Remote — Europe / UK based We are supporting a search for a Lead QA Engineer within a growing life sciences software and solutions company building complex products for scientific and technical users.This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can take ownership of how quality is approached across the platform as the company continues bringing its engineering capability in-house. Rather than inheriting a mature QA function, you will have the opportunity to shape it. This includes defining test strategy, selecting the right frameworks and tooling, establishing release gates, improving automation, and building processes that can scale as the engineering organisation grows. The platform combines scientific workflows, complex data pipelines, APIs, integrations, computational outputs, and technical user journeys. Quality therefore goes well beyond conventional UI testing. You will need to think about data correctness, reproducibility, system behaviour, integration boundaries, reliability, permissions, and what needs to be true before a release is ready to reach customers. You will also work closely with engineers, product managers, and scientists, translating sometimes ambiguous technical or scientific requirements into clear acceptance criteria and helping build a culture where quality becomes a shared engineering responsibility. The role will focus on:Taking ownership of the QA strategy, processes, standards, and release governance as engineering scalesDefining test architecture and automation strategy across a complex SaaS platformEstablishing quality gates across development, staging, and release environmentsOwning test strategy across UI, APIs, integrations, microservices, data pipelines, and end-to-end workflowsBuilding and maintaining automated testing for critical product and customer journeysHelping define how contract, integration, regression, performance, and reliability testing should be approachedWorking with product managers and scientists to translate complex requirements into measurable acceptance criteriaDefining quality metrics and giving leadership a clear view of release confidence, open risks, and coverageOwning validation approaches for scientific and data-driven workflows, including reproducibility and reference datasetsDriving QA requirements within CI/CD pipelines and improving the reliability and effectiveness of automated testingLeading root-cause analysis and postmortems for significant defects or production issuesHelping engineers improve their own testing practices and creating stronger shared ownership of qualityInfluencing tooling, processes, engineering standards, and future QA capability as the organisation grows We are looking for someone with:Strong experience leading or significantly shaping QA within a SaaS, software, or technical product environmentExperience establishing or improving QA processes, standards, and release governanceStrong hands-on experience with UI and API test automationExperience designing test strategies for complex, integrated, or distributed software architecturesGood understanding of APIs, microservices, backend workflows, data pipelines, and end-to-end system behaviourExperience working with CI/CD pipelines, automated quality gates, and release processesStrong scripting or programming ability in Python, JavaScript, or similarExperience translating unclear product or stakeholder requirements into concrete, testable acceptance criteriaAbility to define meaningful quality metrics and communicate risk and release confidence to senior stakeholdersStrong analytical thinking and confidence investigating complex defects rather than simply reporting themThe ability to influence engineering practices and raise quality standards without needing formal authority over every team Nice to have:Experience with PyTest, Cypress, Selenium, Playwright, Postman, Pact, or similar toolsSQL and database validation experiencePerformance, load, reliability, or resilience testing experienceExperience with cloud environments, containers, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, or GCPExperience with observability or monitoring tools such as Grafana or DatadogExperience testing scientific, healthcare, biotech, pharma, regulated, or data-intensive softwareExposure to GxP, GAMP 5, validated systems, or software used within regulated life sciences environmentsExperience validating analytical models, computational results, scientific pipelines, golden datasets, or reproducibilityPrevious experience helping build a QA function within a startup, scale-up, or organisation bringing engineering in-house This is a good fit for someone who wants genuine ownership but does not want to move away from the technical side of QA. The company does not need someone simply managing a testing team or allocating tickets. They need someone who can decide what good QA should look like, build the foundations around it, challenge engineering and product when required, and still get hands-on with automation, architecture, releases, and difficult technical quality problems. Apply here, or if you know someone from your network who works around QA leadership, test automation, SaaS architecture, scientific software, or complex technical platforms, please let me know.