We’re looking for an experienced and forward thinking Quality Engineering (QE) Manager to lead the transformation of our existing QA function into a modern, automation first QE team in our Timisoara office. This is a strategic and hands on leadership role where you’ll drive the adoption of an SDET model, champion engineering practices across the quality lifecycle, and provide clear visibility into test coverage and release readiness for stakeholders across the business.

We are evolving from a traditional QA setup to a Quality Engineering model and we’re looking for someone who can lead this journey through modernising tooling, redefining team culture and aligning our quality efforts with agile delivery and continuous deployment.

This role will help shape how we test and how the business experiences quality; bringing clarity, speed and confidence to every release.

The QA team is a hybrid team based out of our Timisoara, Romania office. The successful candidate may be based in Northern Ireland but willing to travel to the Timisoara and Belfast offices.

Responsibilities

• Lead the evolution of our QA team into a modern Quality Engineering function, strengthening automation, engineering discipline, and test strategy.
• Champion automation-first practices across UI, API, integration and regression layers, evolving our Cypress.io based framework.
• Design and implement test strategies tightly integrated with CI/CD pipelines.
• Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies including AI assisted and Playwright MCP style tools to improve efficiency and coverage.
• Build visibility and confidence through meaningful metrics, coverage dashboards and release readiness reports that clearly show what’s been tested and why it matters.
• Partner with Developers, DevOps, and Product Owners to embed testing early in the SDLC (“shift left”) and integrate security and compliance testing into delivery pipelines.
• Mentor and develop QA engineers into SDET style professionals with coding and automation skills.
• Optimise testing effort balancing manual, automated and AI driven testing to reduce repetition and increase speed.
• Drive continuous improvement through retrospectives, data led insights and practical process refinement.
• Advocate for quality across the organisation, ensuring QA/QE is seen as a proactive partner, not a gatekeeper.

Required

• 10+ years in a QA role within a web development environment
• 5+ years leading QA teams, transforming teams through automation and modern QE practices
• Strong technical knowledge and hands on experience with Cypress.io (or similar modern JS-based testing frameworks).
• Proven experience designing and implementing test automation frameworks and strategies within CI/CD pipelines.
• Confident using test coverage tools, dashboards and reporting tools to improve visibility for stakeholders.
• Solid JavaScript knowledge and ideally some exposure to PHP or Laravel-based backends preferred.
• Strong understanding of agile and lean methodologies (Scrum, Kanban).
• Proven ability to mentor, coach and grow QA engineers into SDETs and lead cultural change.
• Experience in exploratory, cross browser and accessibility testing.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Willing to travel occasionally to our Belfast HQ.

Desirable

• Experience implementing Playwright MCP, test orchestration, or similar AI-augmented frameworks.
• Familiarity with Jenkins, or AWS CodePipeline for test automation integration.
• Exposure to observability tools (e.g. Grafana, Kibana, Datadog) to link production data to test coverage insights.
• ISTQB or equivalent certification
• Experience in fintech, e-commerce, or online comparison environments

Can identify with and commit to our company values:

SMART
We are innovative and strategic
We find better ways to do things

EFFICIENT
We maximise productivity and value for money
We minimise waste and duplication

OPEN
We are one team – diverse, loyal and respectful
We welcome new ideas, challenge and change

PASSIONATE
We are ambitious, positive and driven
We celebrate the success of our company and colleagues

ACCOUNTABLE
We are responsible, trustworthy and dependable
We do what we say we will

Remuneration:

Seopa offers a competitive salary & comprehensive benefits package:

• Private medical insurance
• Life assurance
• Pension with annual pension clinic
• Health cashback plan
• Hybrid working arrangements
• Annual travel card loan
• Additional service-related holidays and option to buy more
• Cycle-to-work scheme
• Full access to online learning system
• Wide-ranging discount reward schemes

About Seopa

Founded in 2003 with branches in Belfast (Head Office) and Timisoara, we are an industry leader in creating and hosting insurance, finance and utility price comparison engines. In addition to providing our software and systems to other companies, we also operate our own insurance comparison brands – Quotezone.co.uk and CompareNI.com.

Used by millions of people each year, our systems enable insurance and utility providers to secure business within their target markets and empower consumers to easily identify providers who meet their financial product requirements at market-leading prices. Our Affinity Partnerships enable other companies to offer additional financial services on their websites and increase their revenues. Our products are used by over 400 financial partners in the insurance, finance and utilities industry.

Our success is recognised by a series of awards including six consecutive Deloitte Technology Fast 50 awards, a Deloitte EMEA Technology Fast500 award, several prestigious Deloitte Best Managed Companies awards (2017, 2018 and 2019), three Gold Standard Best Managed Companies award status (2020, 2021 and 2022) and Platinum Standard Best Managed Companies award 2023, 2024 and 2025.