Head of Quality Engineering

Company

We are looking for a Head of Quality Engineering to join our team in Chiswick, West London. You will be accountable for software quality, application security, and production observability across all International SOS digital platforms.

Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer, this executive transforms quality from a downstream validation activity into an automated, continuous capability embedded throughout the software lifecycle. The role directs enterprise automated testing (SDET), governs Shift-Left practices, leads Application Security (AppSec) in the development pipeline, and partners with SRE to enable production observability and telemetry to ensure platform resilience, defect reduction, and rapid incident detection.

The Role

Quality Strategy & Shift-Left Engineering
• Formulate and execute the enterprise Quality Engineering strategy, establishing automation-first quality gates across all delivery pods.
• Drive the widespread adoption of Shift-Left engineering practices, including Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), and automated contract testing.
• Establish clear quality criteria and release gates, making quality a shared accountability between developers, tech leads, and QA engineers.

Test Automation & SDET Enablement
• Build and scale a centralized SDET and automation framework capability, supporting web, API, mobile, and data platform testing.
• Direct automation across functional, integration, regression, and non-functional domains (performance, load, accessibility, resilience).
• Introduce AI-assisted test design, synthetic data generation, and automated regression suite maintenance into testing workflows.

Application Security & DevSecOps
• Lead the Application Security (AppSec) program within the engineering lifecycle, embedding automated SAST, DAST, SCA, and container security into CI/CD pipelines.
• Establish secure coding standards, threat modeling practices, and vulnerability remediation workflows in developer pods.
• Partner with corporate InfoSec and SOC teams led by the CISO, defining a clear operational handoff between in-pipeline code security and enterprise security operations.

Governance, Metrics & Leadership
• Define and report on comprehensive quality metrics, including defect leakage rates, test automation coverage, vulnerability aging, and MTTR.
• Lead, mentor, and build the global Quality Engineering organization across London and offshore engineering centers.
• Drive continuous vendor oversight, ensuring third-party delivery partners adhere to International SOS quality and security standards.

Requirements

• Minimum 7 years of progressive experience in software engineering, test automation, AppSec, and quality leadership.
• At least 2 years leading quality engineering or DevSecOps organizations in complex, distributed cloud enterprise environments.
• Demonstrated track record implementing Shift-Left testing, CI/CD security automation, and enterprise observability frameworks.

Technical Expertise
• Deep expertise in modern test automation frameworks (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Rest Assured) and CI/CD quality integration.
• Strong technical mastery of Application Security practices, OWASP Top 10, pipeline scanning tools (Snyk, SonarQube, Veracode), and container security.
• Thorough understanding of cloud-native architectures on AWS, microservices, and modern API testing.

Soft Skills
• High diplomatic and persuasive skill in balancing release pace with quality and security rigor.
• Clear communication of technical debt and quality risk to executive business stakeholders.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and incentive scheme
• Warm, supportive, and open company culture
• An opportunity to thrive in a global environment
• Hybrid working: 3 days in the office
• Birthday holiday and option to purchase additional annual leave
• Comprehensive Benefits Package: Private Pension, Private Medical Insurance, Life Assurance and more.