Job Description
Quality Engineer
Location: National*
Closing Date: 12th June 2026
Interviews: W/C 29th June
Grade: SEO
(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)
Salary**:
London - £49,325 - £53,081 which may include an allowance up to £6,725
National - £42,914 - £46,182 which may include an allowance up to £8,761
Working pattern: Full-time, Part-time, Flexible working
Contract Type: Permanent
Number of vacancies: 2
Vacancy number: 17993
*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found ON THIS MAP
Please note that unless you are an existing member of staff at Justice Digital, Data and Science, the only London location being recruited to is 10 South Colonnade, E14 4PU. We are no longer recruiting to 102 Petty France, SW1H 9AJ.
The Role
Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. Please click on the link for details.
We’re recruiting for a Quality Engineer here at Justice Digital, Data and Science to be part of our warm and collaborative LAA Digital team.
This role aligns against Test Engineer from the Government Digital and Data Framework
The work we do is incredibly important to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. LAA Digital seeks to provide swift access to legal aid for those who need it and ensure efficient payment to providers of those services.
As a Quality Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring that digital services are reliable, scalable, and of high quality. Working alongside a multidisciplinary team, you will apply structured testing approaches, ensuring test strategies and quality plans align with project outcomes. You will also support the design and execution of functional and non-functional testing, ensuring that solutions meet the needs of users and stakeholders.
This is a hands-on role where you will have the opportunity to apply best practices, develop test automation, and integrate quality at every stage of development.
The community
You will be part of a collaborative and supportive engineering community, working with developers, product managers, user researchers, designers, business analysts, and delivery managers to embed quality into digital solutions.
We champion continuous learning, open communication, and agile methodologies, ensuring our teams thrive in an environment that is both inclusive and transparent.
We subscribe to the manifesto for agile software development and we're open and transparent. We believe in building quality into our products, systems and services and that quality is everyone's responsibility.
You’ll receive a range of excellent benefits when you join our department, including:
A generous employer pension contribution of 28.97% through the Civil Service Pension Scheme.
25 days of annual leave, (increasing to 30 days once you have reached 5 years of service), plus 8 bank holidays and a privilege day for the King’s birthday.
Flexible working arrangements including hybrid working, working part time or compressed hours. Designed to support a positive work–life balance.
Employees are allocated 10% of their working time for personal and professional development.
A £1k per person learning budget is in place to support all our people, with access to best-in-class conferences and seminars, accreditation with professional bodies, fully funded vocational programmes and e-learning platforms.
Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
You can find more details of the Benefits we offer here. To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital, Data and Science please take a look at our blog.
Key Responsibilities:
Work with others to develop risk-based test strategies, test approaches and test plans that achieve functional and non-functional quality outcomes.
Choose and apply different types of tests and techniques to mitigate risks as early as possible, including using automation to assist with testing.
Design, develop, execute and maintain new and existing test suites including exploratory testing to simultaneously design and execute tests.
Collaborate with team members to provide clear, fast, frequent feedback about quality observations, issues, defects and any related trends, using the most appropriate style and channel of communication.
Work with others to satisfactorily resolve issues.
Create and maintain automated tests using existing automation frameworks, and with some support, extend test automation frameworks and tooling to improve the reliability and efficiency of test activities.
Contribute to the maintenance of CI/CD pipelines, ensuring automated tests run effectively within development workflows and troubleshooting faults with other engineers to resolve issues.
Follow engineering best practices, including source control, SOLID principles, and object-oriented programming.
Contribute to measuring what matters using the most appropriate metrics
Keep up to date with emerging testing methodologies, technologies, and tools, ensuring teams benefit from the latest industry practices.
If this feels like an exciting opportunity that you are enthusiastic about and want to join our warm and collaborative team, please read on and apply!
Person Specification
Essential
Ability to follow and contribute to test strategies, ensuring they align with business goals.
Experience in test planning, design and execution, covering functional and non-functional testing.
Understanding of risk-based testing methodologies and how to apply them effectively.
Basic knowledge of test automation and CI/CD pipelines, with the ability to create and maintain automated test scripts.
Experience with defect management, risk assessment, and test reporting in an Agile context.
Ability to clearly communicate with cross-functional teams.
Some experience with testing tools and automation frameworks, such as Playwright, Postman, Pact, Browserstack, Circle CI.
Experience working in Agile development environments, understanding the role of holistic testing within iterative workflows.
Work with support in Cloud based test environments for example AWS and Kubernetes.
Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for SC clearance.
We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate based on culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor.
Our values are Purpose, Humanity Openness and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace.
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.
Salary Information**
Base salary for this role is London - £49,325 - £53,081 and National - £42,914 - £46,182
New entrants to the Civil Service joining the MoJ are expected to start at the minimum of the pay band.
Existing Civil Servants moving on a level transfer will retain their current base salary or move to the minimum of the pay band for the role, whichever is higher.
Existing Civil Servants who are promoted will either move to the bottom of the new grade’s pay band or receive a 10% uplift, whichever provides the greater increase.
Candidates may also be eligible for a non‑pensionable Government Digital & Data Allowance of up to £6,725 per year (London) or £8,761 (National). This is a temporary allowance, reviewed annually and may be retained, amended, or withdrawn.
The final offer will reflect the skills and experience you demonstrate during the assessment process.
How to Apply
In Justice Digital, Data and Science, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We shall assess a combination of your Experience, Technical skills and Behaviours during the assessment process.
Stage 1 - Application and sift:
To apply for this position, you must submit the following as part of your application:
A CV detailing your career history (including any relevant qualifications). Your CV will be assessed against the essential criteria outlined within the Person Specification of this advert.
A Personal Statement (no more than 750 words) which should outline your experience and skills, giving clear examples of work undertaken. It should specifically address the following 4 criteria listed below, using a separate paragraph for each:
experience in test planning, design and execution, covering functional and non-functional testing.
basic knowledge of test automation and CI/CD pipelines, with the ability to create and maintain automated test scripts.
some experience with testing tools and automation frameworks, such as Playwright, Postman, Pact, Browserstack, Circle CI.
experience working in Agile development environments, understanding the role of holistic testing within iterative workflows.
A diverse sift panel will review the information in your CV and Personal Statement to assess the sift criteria specified above. We operate an anonymous shortlisting process. Please ensure your CV and Personal Statement do not include your name or any other identifying details.
Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on the following will be conducted before the sift:
experience in test planning, design and execution, covering functional and non-functional testing.
basic knowledge of test automation and CI/CD pipelines, with the ability to create and maintain automated test scripts.
work with support in Cloud based test environments for example AWS and Kubernetes.
Please access the following link for guidance on how to apply - Application Guidance
Stage 2 - Interviews:
Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a panel interview held via Microsoft Teams. At interview stage, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements - Experience, Technical and the following Behaviours:
Seeing the big picture
Communicating and influencing
Working together
As part of your interview, you will be asked to deliver a presentation that assesses your technical capability. Further details will be provided if successful after sifting.
Appointments are made strictly in merit order. In the event that two or more candidates receive identical interview scores, the Seeing the big picture will be applied as the primary lead criterion to determine the final merit order.
Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Terms & Conditions
Please review our Terms and Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact digitalanddatarecruitment@justice.gov.uk
