Senior Test Engineer (SDET) | Contract | Remote Rate: Up to £700 per day (Umbrella) Contract: 6 months Location: Remote, with occasional travel to London IR35: In scope Clearance: BPSS We are hiring a hands-on Senior Test Engineer (SDET) for a public sector digital programme. You will write, debug and refactor Playwright/Cucumber test code. You will also own an automation-first quality strategy for national live services in a fast-paced delivery environment. Key responsibilities Define and evolve the automation-first testing strategy Carry out automated system and system integration testing across functional and non-functional areas Report quality risks and results clearly, so they inform defect fixes and release decisions Work closely with developers to improve code quality and unit and integration test coverage Peer review automation code and lead sprint show-and-tells Assess the impact of changes on test coverageEssential skills Test tools: Cucumber, Playwright and K6 Version control: GitHub and Azure DevOps Microsoft-stack coding: C#, Node.js, JavaScript or TypeScript SQL and relational databases Testing on .NET, SQL and microservices, both on-prem and in the cloud Proven experience as an automation test engineer