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Job summary

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.

Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

1. joining up public sector services
2. harnessing the power of AI for the public good
3. strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
4. elevating leadership and investing in talent
5. funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
6. committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.

We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.

Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.

Job description

Government Assurance Services (GAS) is a cross-government digital platform transforming how central government manages assurance and approvals. It provides a single “front door” for departments to register initiatives, navigate assurance requirements and progress business cases through approval routes.

GAS sits at the centre of wider assurance and funding reform, addressing a fragmented landscape where processes are duplicated, unclear and manually intensive. The service brings together multiple assurance journeys into a unified digital experience, supported by a shared data model and reusable components.

The platform supports a range of functions including digital, commercial and funding approvals, and is designed to scale without creating bespoke solutions for each new requirement. Delivery operates in a complex and evolving policy context, with dependencies across multiple central functions and organisations.

The GAS team works across organisational boundaries to design and deliver an end-to-end assurance experience, working closely with departments, functional teams and senior stakeholders to drive adoption and improve outcomes.

This role is critical to ensuring quality delivery across the platform, while identifying opportunities for process improvement and innovation. You will take responsibility for ensuring that our services meet the highest standards of functional and non-functional quality, collaborating across a multidisciplinary team to design and execute comprehensive test plans that cover all aspects of the product life cycle.

This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in driving testing excellence.

Our platform runs on Mendix.

As a Test Engineer, you’ll:

• develop and maintain test automation frameworks and automated scripts using industry-standard tools
• collaborate with stakeholders including product managers, developers, and architects to foster a culture of quality
• design and execute comprehensive test plans and test cases, ensuring full coverage of functional, regression, and integration testing
• work with development teams to drive shift-left testing practices by integrating automated tests into the software development lifecycle and active participation in early stages
• analyse test results to identify trends, risks, and patterns, helping to drive proactive quality improvements
• actively participate in daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and refinement sessions to identify risks, gaps and test dependencies

Person specification

We’re interested in people who have:

• strong experience in software testing across the full SDLC, from gathering requirements to delivering production-ready solutions. Includes test strategy, test analysis, automation, defect management, and reporting using Cucumber/Gherkin, or equivalent structured approaches

• proven experience in web services, REST and developing and maintaining test automation frameworks for UI and API using tools such as Playwright, Storybook, Test Complete or BrowserStack, and programming languages such as JavaScript or TypeScript

• the ability to contribute to the design, optimization, coding, testing and documentation of small scale to large, complex or mission critical applications with the ability to clearly communicate risks and the impact of defects to stakeholders

• experience designing, building, maintaining and executing tests that align to user needs and requirements, such as Integrating tests into CI/CD Pipelines, and non-functional testing requirements.

• strong collaboration skills, communicating effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders and working closely with cross-functional teams to embed quality engineering best practices throughout the SDLC

• experience of Agile testing, TDD/BDD, and using defect and root cause analysis to improve software quality.

• experience contributing to continuous improvement of quality testing approaches, plans and strategies and staying updated with the latest advancements in testing tools, frameworks, and methodologies

Benefits

There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:

• flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
• a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
• 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
• an extra day off for the King’s birthday
• an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
• career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
• a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
• job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
• advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
• death in service benefits
• cycle to work scheme and facilities
• access to an employee discounts scheme
• 10 learning days per year
• volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
• access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning

Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

Office attendance
The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.
DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).

Things you need to know

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 (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

The standard selection process for roles at GDS consists of:

• a simple application screening process - We only ask for a CV and to answer 2 application questions
• a 60 minute video interview

Depending on how many applications we get, there might also be an extra stage before the video interview, for example a phone interview or a technical exercise.

In the event we receive a high volume of applications, we will conduct the initial sift against the lead criteria which is: Describe a time when you identified a testing risk that could have affected users of a digital service. What was the risk, how did you manage it, and what was the outcome?

In the Civil Service, we use Success Profiles to evaluate your skills and ability. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, increases performance and improves diversity and inclusivity. We’ll be assessing your technical abilities, skills, experience and behaviours that are relevant to this role.

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours:

• working together
• changing and improving
• communicating and influencing
• managing a quality service

We’ll also be assessing your experience and specialist technical skills against the following skills defined in the Government Digital and Data Capability Framework for the Test Engineer role:

• communicating between the technical and non-technical
• designing and executing tests
• managing, reporting and resolving defects
• test analysis
• test and quality planning
• test engineering

Want to know more about who Government Digital and Data are? Click Here

Recruitment Timeline

Sift completion: 28/7/26

Panel interviews: Starting from 5/8/26

Candidates that do not pass the interview but have demonstrated an acceptable standard may be considered for similar roles at a lower grade.

A reserve list will be held for a period of 12 months, from which further appointments can be made.

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.

Please note that this role requires SC clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years. This is not an absolute requirement, but supplementary checks may be needed where individuals have not lived in the UK for that period. This may mean your security clearance (and therefore your appointment) will take longer or, in some cases, not be possible.

For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency may range from 3 to 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers.

Sponsorship

DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk
• Email : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should contact gds-complaints@dsit.gov.uk in the first instance.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive you can contact the Civil Service Commission by email: info@csc.gov.uk Or in writing: Civil Service Commission, Room G/8 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ.