QA Engineer
SundayyAbout The Company
Bauer Media Group is a leading global media organization dedicated to creating compelling content that resonates with millions of people across Europe. Our portfolio spans a diverse range of media platforms, including print publications, digital content, audio broadcasting, and entertainment. With over 500 million copies sold annually, we are one of Europe's largest publishers, owning prominent brands in Germany, the UK, Poland, and France. Our radio and podcast brands reach more than 61 million listeners weekly across nine countries, reflecting our commitment to engaging audiences through innovative and high-quality content. As a family-owned company in its fifth generation, Bauer Media emphasizes long-term growth and a consumer-first approach, fostering a dynamic environment that values creativity, inclusivity, and technological advancement. Our team of 12,000 professionals shares a common purpose: to enrich everyday lives through meaningful media experiences.
About The Role
We are seeking a highly skilled Principal QA Engineer to join our Digital Quality Assurance team within the Technology Advisory division. This strategic role is pivotal in elevating the quality standards of our backend platform, which supports Rayo—our unified audio and radio experience across web, mobile, smart speakers, and backend services. As a key technical authority, you will drive a shift-left quality culture by embedding testability, resilience, and contract integrity into system design and development processes. Collaborating closely with backend engineers, product managers, SRE/DevOps teams, and architects, you will influence architectural decisions and promote automation-first testing practices to ensure our platform can scale safely and reliably. Your contributions will directly impact system robustness, deployment speed, and overall engineering confidence, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
Qualifications
Bauer Media Group is an equal opportunities employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds, regardless of religion, gender, ethnicity, disability, or long-term health conditions. We are dedicated to ensuring our recruitment process is accessible and equitable. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the application or interview process, please contact us. We believe that diverse teams foster innovation and excellence, and we encourage everyone to apply.
Bauer Media Group is a leading global media organization dedicated to creating compelling content that resonates with millions of people across Europe. Our portfolio spans a diverse range of media platforms, including print publications, digital content, audio broadcasting, and entertainment. With over 500 million copies sold annually, we are one of Europe's largest publishers, owning prominent brands in Germany, the UK, Poland, and France. Our radio and podcast brands reach more than 61 million listeners weekly across nine countries, reflecting our commitment to engaging audiences through innovative and high-quality content. As a family-owned company in its fifth generation, Bauer Media emphasizes long-term growth and a consumer-first approach, fostering a dynamic environment that values creativity, inclusivity, and technological advancement. Our team of 12,000 professionals shares a common purpose: to enrich everyday lives through meaningful media experiences.
About The Role
We are seeking a highly skilled Principal QA Engineer to join our Digital Quality Assurance team within the Technology Advisory division. This strategic role is pivotal in elevating the quality standards of our backend platform, which supports Rayo—our unified audio and radio experience across web, mobile, smart speakers, and backend services. As a key technical authority, you will drive a shift-left quality culture by embedding testability, resilience, and contract integrity into system design and development processes. Collaborating closely with backend engineers, product managers, SRE/DevOps teams, and architects, you will influence architectural decisions and promote automation-first testing practices to ensure our platform can scale safely and reliably. Your contributions will directly impact system robustness, deployment speed, and overall engineering confidence, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
Qualifications
- Proven experience in a technical QA Automation or Backend Engineering role within a shift-left environment.
- Deep understanding of RESTful architectures, JSON Schema validation, or GraphQL types at the contract level.
- Proficiency in Golang or another object-oriented programming language with the ability to quickly learn Go.
- Experience testing asynchronous and event-driven architectures such as Kafka or SQS, with knowledge of data consistency and resilience patterns.
- Strong experience working within Agile/Scrum methodologies, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives.
- Expertise in using AI tooling for code and test generation, with the ability to critique, debug, and refine AI-produced code.
- Hands-on experience testing complex APIs, cloud-hosted environments (preferably AWS), and building automated tests within CI/CD pipelines.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with a team-first mindset.
- Knowledge of containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes (desired).
- Experience with load testing tools like k6 and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation) (desired).
- Lead architectural design reviews in collaboration with developers and product managers, focusing on embedding Testability by Design principles.
- Develop and oversee strategies for Contract Driven Testing, enabling independent service evolution without dependency breakage.
- Promote and enforce Schema-First development practices, utilizing OpenAPI/Swagger specifications as authoritative sources and automating their validation.
- Design and implement a multi-layered automation strategy emphasizing API and service-level testing, complemented by targeted end-to-end validation using tools like Playwright and TypeScript.
- Partner with development teams to mature Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) practices within Agile workflows.
- Integrate automated regression suites and quality gates into CI/CD pipelines to facilitate continuous testing and feedback.
- Own load and performance testing strategies, ensuring backend resilience under high traffic scenarios and supporting other teams such as Web and Mobile.
- Collaborate with SRE/DevOps teams to incorporate observability—logging, tracing, metrics—using tools like OpenTelemetry or Datadog into the quality assurance process.
- Leverage AI-assisted coding tools for accelerating boilerplate code and test generation, while maintaining ownership of architecture, logic, and code quality.
- Formalize QA practices and mentor engineers across the organization on modern, automation-first testing methodologies.
- 28 days of annual leave plus bank holidays and two volunteer days.
- Access to internal training programs through Bauer Academy for continuous professional development.
- Enhanced maternity, adoption, paternity, and shared parental leave policies.
- Flexible working arrangements to support work-life balance.
- Inclusive and diverse work environment committed to equal opportunities.
- Opportunities for career growth and involvement in innovative projects.
- Supportive remote-first culture with occasional in-person collaboration (approximately eight times per year) in Manchester or London offices.
Bauer Media Group is an equal opportunities employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds, regardless of religion, gender, ethnicity, disability, or long-term health conditions. We are dedicated to ensuring our recruitment process is accessible and equitable. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the application or interview process, please contact us. We believe that diverse teams foster innovation and excellence, and we encourage everyone to apply.