Lead Automation Engineer

We’re Capital on Tap 👋 💳 Capital on Tap started because small businesses were underserved. Big banks were slow, their products weren't fit for purpose, and small business owners often couldn't access what they needed. We set out to fix that. Today we're a financial platform - not just a credit card company. We offer a best-in-class business credit card, SME-focused spend management platform, a savings product that hit £1 billion in funds within its first year, and a growing suite of tools and financial products that make running a small business easier. 1,000+ employees, £20bn in annual card spend, 200,000+ customers, 17,000+ Trustpilot reviews averaging 4.7 stars, and we're profitable. We’ve done a pretty good job so far, but we’re just getting started! 📍 Porto Matosinhos | 🏢 2 Days in the Office | €65,000 - €75 ,000 Quality Engineering at Capital on Tap 🚀 Quality Engineering is embedded across our mission teams, partnering with Engineering, Product, and UX to champion quality at every stage of the software lifecycle. We build quality in from the start - not bolt it on at the end. The Lead Automation Engineer is a critical, hands-on role embedded within a Mission team. Reporting functionally to your mission team’s Lead, you will be the quality champion for your specific feature set. You will leverage standardised automation tooling to maximise test coverage, accelerate delivery velocity, and maintain the highest quality standards for our products. What You'll Be Doing 🗃️ Mission Team Quality Ownership & Strategy 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 to ensure quality is engineered in from the start. Directly manage the mission team’s automation targets and use data-driven insights (MTTD/MTTR, defect escape rates) to predict high-risk areas. Technical Leadership & Tooling Adoption 🧰 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. Collaboration, Coaching & AI Innovation 🤖 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. Our Values & Culture 🌞 Just Pilot: We never settle for “good enough”. We pilot new ideas fast, ask questions to figure it out, and scale quickly. Why Not Today? Fast is as slow as we go - speed and simplicity gives us a competitive advantage. Be a Buddy: We tap in from day one to help the team, we do the right thing even if it’s hard. Owners and Dates: We don’t chase people. If you own a task and agree to a date, the expectation is that it gets done. Feedback: We want our employees to flourish, so we regularly provide direct and constructive feedback. We’re Looking For 🔎 Experience: 5+ years in QA Automation/SDET roles with proven success leading quality within an Agile team. Programming: Strong proficiency in modern langua…