QA Engineer

About us

At National Grid, we keep people connected and society moving. But it’s so much more than that. National Grid provides the environment to make it happen. As we build momentum in the energy transition for all, we don’t plan on leaving any of our customers in the dark. So, join us as a QA Engineer, and find your superpower.

National Grid is hiring a QA Engineer to join our Technology team. This role can be based at our Warwick, Bristol, or Cardiff offices. This role operates under a with hybrid working model. You’ll also have access to our London co‑working space if that fits your working pattern. 

You’ll play a key role in leading quality assurance practices and ensuring the delivery of secure, scalable, and high‑quality systems and platforms that support critical operations across our enterprise.

About The Role

Reporting to the Lead QA Engineer, this is an opportunity to play a critical role in shaping the quality of systems that underpin essential business operations. As a QA Engineer, you’ll be at the heart of delivering high‑quality, resilient, and scalable platforms, driving best-in-class QA practices across both functional and non-functional testing.

You’ll take real ownership of your work—leading QA activities end-to-end and setting the standard across automated and non‑functional testing, including performance, security, accessibility, cross‑browser, and usability. Your impact will be visible, ensuring our systems are not only reliable, but trusted at scale.

This is a hands-on engineering role where you’ll design, build, and evolve robust test automation frameworks, creating clean, maintainable, and high-performing automation code. You’ll constantly look for ways to improve how we test—raising the bar for quality and engineering excellence across the team.

Alongside this, you’ll play a key part in uplifting QA capability, supporting and mentoring junior QA Engineers and manual testers, helping them adopt modern testing approaches, strong engineering principles, and effective configuration management practices.

Working closely with other QA Engineers and cross-functional teams, you’ll help ensure consistent standards, governance, and high-quality delivery, aligned with wider Group engineering practices and long-term technology strategy. 

What You'll Do

As a QA Engineer, you’ll play a key role in ensuring we deliver high-quality, resilient, and scalable technology solutions that support critical operations. You’ll take ownership of QA delivery across the full lifecycle, driving excellence in both automation and quality standards.
In this role, you will:

• Own and evolve our test automation capabilities — building and maintaining a robust, well-engineered automation codebase that supports the programme from initial delivery through to ongoing change
• Champion best-in-class QA practices, working closely with Senior QA Engineers and QA Leads to ensure consistent use of tools, standards, and engineering approaches
• Design and develop high-quality test scenarios and test cases, covering both functional and non-functional requirements
• Lead on non-functional testing strategy, including performance, accessibility, usability, cross-browser, and security testing—ensuring systems are reliable, secure, and scalable
• Build and maintain traceability between requirements and testing, creating automation scripts, reusable assets, and comprehensive regression packs
• Collaborate with stakeholders across the business to ensure the right test data is in place and environments are ready ahead of execution
• Analyse test outcomes and provide clear, actionable insights, highlighting progress, risks, issues, and opportunities for improvement
• Drive high-quality defect management, ensuring issues are clearly documented with all necessary detail to support efficient resolution
• Investigate complex issues across applications and environments, working hands-on to support root cause analysis and resolution
• Act as a guardian of quality, proactively identifying risks and escalating concerns to ensure standards are never compromised
• Play an active role in Agile delivery, ensuring QA blockers and challenges are surfaced and resolved through ceremonies and team collaboration
• Support and uplift others in the team, sharing knowledge and helping junior QA Engineers and manual testers adopt modern, automation-led practices

About You

You’re a passionate QA Engineer who thrives on building high-quality, scalable solutions and continuously improving how teams approach testing. You bring a strong engineering mindset, a problem-solving attitude, and a drive to automate, innovate, and elevate quality standards.
To succeed in this role, you’ll bring:

• Strong programming expertise in Java and/or Python, with a focus on writing clean, maintainable, and scalable automation code
• Hands-on experience with modern automation frameworks such as Playwright or Selenium, and a passion for building robust test solutions
• Proven experience in accessibility testing, ensuring inclusive and compliant digital experiences for all users
• The ability to plan and execute performance testing, using tools like JMeter, k6, or similar, to ensure systems perform at scale
• A solid understanding of Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) and how to apply it effectively within Agile teams
• Strong experience in API testing, using tools such as REST Assured, Postman, or SOAP UI
• A deep understanding of non-functional requirements, with the ability to translate them into effective, practical test strategies
• Experience integrating testing into CI/CD pipelines, and working with modern build and delivery tooling
• A clear grasp of Test Driven Development (TDD) principles and how they support modern engineering practices
• Knowledge of security testing approaches and an awareness of risks within enterprise environments
• Exposure to cloud platforms such as AWS and/or Azure, with experience testing in cloud-based environments
• A strong track record of working in Agile teams, actively contributing to delivery, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• The confidence to work autonomously, take ownership, and adapt in fast-paced, evolving environments
• Experience with software engineering tools such as Maven, IntelliJ/Eclipse, and code quality tools like SonarQube

It would be great if you also have:

• Experience with unit testing frameworks such as JUnit or TestNG
• Exposure to JavaScript, TypeScript, SQL, or test management tools like TestRail

What You'll Get

Competitive Salary: circa £48,000 – £60,000 per annum (based on capability, and experience)

Additional benefits:

• 26 days’ annual leave, plus 8 statutory bank holidays, with the option to buy additional holiday days and swap up to 3 bank holidays to better suit your personal needs.
• A generous pension scheme with double matching up to 6% of your salary each month. For every £1 you contribute, we’ll contribute £2 — meaning a 6% personal contribution becomes an 18% total pension contribution.
• Life insurance cover of 10x your basic salary, plus employer contributions towards the cost of your Private Medical Insurance.
• Flexible benefits such as a cycle scheme, share incentive plan, technology schemes
• Access to apps such as digital GP service for round the clock access to GP video consultations and NHS repeat prescriptions, wellbeing app to support your health and fitness
• Access to Work + Family Space, providing support and resources for work and family life, including paid emergency childcare and eldercare

More Information
 

• This role can be based at our Warwick, Bristol, or Cardiff offices. This role operates under a hybrid working model - and you’ll also have access to our London co‑working space if that location suits your working pattern. 
• Every quarter, you’ll attend a 2–3 day in‑person planning event held at one of our office locations.
• This role is offered on a full time basis.
• This role closes on 30th June however we strongly encourage candidates to submit their application as early as possible. 
   

**Please note that in most cases, National Grid is unable to offer sponsorship for employment under the UK points-based immigration system. As such, applicants must have the legal right to work in the UK without requiring sponsorship now or in the future under the UK points-based immigration system. However, in exceptional circumstances where there is a clear and demonstrable need for specialist skills that cannot be sourced from the local labour market, National Grid may consider offering sponsorship. All applications are welcome from candidates who meet these requirements, regardless of race, nationality, or ethnic origin.**

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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

National Grid is an equal opportunity employer that values a broad diversity of talent, knowledge, experience and expertise.  We foster a culture of inclusion that drives employee engagement to deliver superior performance to the communities we serve.  National Grid is proud to be an affirmative action employer. We encourage minorities, women, individuals with disabilities and protected veterans to join the National Grid team.