Lead Automation Engineer

Stack

Responsibilities

• ▹Define and own the comprehensive testing strategy for your domain (e.g., payments, banking, onboarding), ensuring end-to-end quality and compliance in partnership with the QA Team Lead
• ▹Act as the primary contributor for automation: design, develop and maintain robust automated tests (API, UI, Mobile)
• ▹Champion a Shift-Left mindset, working with Product Owners and Developers from the refinement stage
• ▹Directly manage the mission team's automation targets and use data-driven insights (MTTD/MTTR, defect escape rates) to predict high-risk areas
• ▹Serve as the mission team's expert on central automation frameworks, driving consistent adoption of CI/CD processes and quality gates
• ▹Identify team-specific gaps and collaborate with the central Tooling Team to develop custom helpers or data generators that enhance the core framework
• ▹Ensure automated test suites are fully integrated into CI/CD pipelines to enable rapid, reliable deployment and a fail-fast mechanism
• ▹Coordinate complex technical testing, including microservices, security (OWASP ZAP) and performance testing
• ▹Coach and upskill developers and junior QA engineers on automation best practices and test design patterns
• ▹Champion the use of AI tools (Claude, GitHub Copilot) for complex tasks like architecture exploration, incident investigation and test generation
• ▹Leverage component testing, service virtualization and contract testing to reduce dependencies and enable independent team testing
• ▹Define test data strategies and environment requirements to support both automated and exploratory testing

Requirements

• ▹5+ years in QA Automation/SDET roles with proven success leading quality within an Agile team
• ▹Strong proficiency in modern languages essential for automation, specifically C# or JavaScript/TypeScript
• ▹Experience testing complex financial systems (card issuing, transaction processing or credit risk)
• ▹Hands-on experience with tools for UI (Playwright, Cypress) and API (REST Assured, other API testing frameworks)
• ▹Familiarity with Azure and Git, and integrating automated testing into deployment workflows
• ▹Ability to influence without authority, encouraging developers and POs to prioritise automation and quality

Soft skills

What we offer

• ▹Private healthcare through AdvanceCare
• ▹Anniversary rewards (€280, €570, €860, 4-week fully paid sabbatical)
• ▹Paid car parking
• ▹36 days holiday (inclusive of public holidays, which are carried over if they fall on a weekend)
• ▹Annual learning and wellbeing budget
• ▹6 free therapy sessions per year
• ▹Free drinks and snacks in the offices
• ▹Fully remote at the start, then hybrid with two days a week on site once the Lisbon office opens
• ▹Salary: €65,000 - €75,000

About the company

Capital on Tap is a financial platform for small businesses, offering a business credit card, a spend management platform and a savings product. It has 1,000+ employees and 200,000+ customers, £20bn in annual card spend, and is profitable.