Data Test Engineer (SC Cleared)

Job Information

Date Opened

17/07/2026

Job Type

Contract

Industry

Government & Public Sector

Work Experience

5+ years

Salary

300 - 350 Inside IR35

City

Newcastle upon Tyne

Province

Tyne and Wear

Country

United Kingdom

Postal Code

NE1

Job Description

About Scrumconnect

Scrumconnect Consulting is a UK-based digital transformation consultancy delivering agile, secure, and scalable technology solutions for public and private sector clients. This is a fully remote role based in India, supporting UK operations and client engagements. The successful candidate will work closely with UK leadership teams and must be comfortable operating within UK regulatory, governance, and delivery frameworks.

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced Test Manager to lead quality assurance and testing activities within a large-scale cloud data engineering programme operating across a modern AWS-native technology ecosystem, including Apache Airflow, Amazon Athena, AWS Glue, S3, EMR, DynamoDB, and related cloud services.

This role combines hands-on technical leadership with test strategy ownership. You will be responsible for defining and driving the overall testing approach across automated pipelines, data workflows, cloud infrastructure, and release delivery while managing risks, improving testing standards, and mentoring engineering teams.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience in Big Data and Data Lake environments, including testing both structured and unstructured datasets, and will be comfortable operating in highly automated CI/CD-driven delivery environments.

You will work closely with engineering, DevOps, architecture, and stakeholder teams to ensure quality is embedded throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

Test Strategy & Leadership

Define, implement, and manage the overall test strategy across cloud-native data platforms and applications

Lead end-to-end testing activities across data pipelines, cloud services, APIs, and distributed systems

Establish quality standards, governance processes, and testing best practices across teams

Drive a quality-first engineering culture across the programme

Provide leadership, mentoring, and coaching to Test Engineers and QA team members

Automated Testing & Frameworks

Design, implement, and oversee scalable automated test frameworks for data and application testing

Build and maintain automated test suites across AWS cloud infrastructure and data workflows

Enhance existing automation frameworks to improve reliability, coverage, maintainability, and reporting

Ensure automated testing is fully integrated within GitLab CI/CD pipelines for rapid feedback and release confidence

Big Data & Data Lake Testing

Lead testing activities across Big Data and Data Lake solutions containing structured and unstructured datasets

Validate large-scale data ingestion, transformation, and processing workflows

Ensure data integrity, transformation accuracy, reconciliation, and performance under load

Oversee PySpark-based data validation and interrogation activities on AWS EMR

Support testing and monitoring of workflows orchestrated through Apache Airflow

Drive root cause analysis for production data issues and platform defects

Risk Management & Reporting

Identify, assess, and communicate quality risks across releases and environments

Analyse test execution metrics, defects, trends, and quality indicators

Translate technical findings into clear, prioritised reporting for technical and non-technical stakeholders

Provide regular status reporting to programme leadership and client stakeholders

CI/CD & DevOps

Collaborate with DevOps and engineering teams to improve release quality and deployment confidence

Ensure automated test execution within GitLab CI/CD pipelines

Support infrastructure testing and validation within Terraform-managed cloud environments

Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives across testing and delivery processes

Technology Stack

Apache Airflow, Amazon Athena, AWS S3, AWS Glue, AWS EMR, AWS EC2, AWS ECR, AWS DynamoDB, AWS CloudWatch, AWS IAM, Python, SQL, Java, Bash, GitLab CI/CD, Jupyter Notebooks, Apache Spark / PySpark, Terraform, Docker

Key Skills

Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, Java, and scripting languages such as Bash

Hands-on experience testing Big Data platforms and Data Lake solutions

Strong experience with AWS EMR, Apache Airflow, and Jupyter Notebooks

Experience performing PySpark-based data interrogation, validation, and testing

Strong knowledge of AWS services including S3, Glue, Athena, EMR, CloudWatch, IAM, DynamoDB, EC2, and ECR

Experience designing, implementing, and managing enterprise-scale automated test frameworks

Strong understanding of CI/CD practices using GitLab pipelines

Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform

Familiarity with Docker and containerised testing environments

Understanding of dimensional data models and slowly changing dimensions

Experience validating structured and unstructured data workflows

Strong analytical and root cause analysis skills

Ability to communicate technical risks clearly to stakeholders at all levels

Experience leading and mentoring QA/Test Engineering teams

Skills & Experience Required

Proven experience as a Test Manager, Lead Test Engineer, or QA Lead within cloud and data engineering environments

Strong background in automated testing for cloud-native and data-centric platforms

Experience testing large-scale data pipelines, transformation processes, and distributed systems

Experience managing or leading QA/testing teams in Agile delivery environments

Strong stakeholder management and communication skills

Experience establishing test governance, reporting, and quality metrics

Strong problem-solving and decision-making capability

Experience working within regulated or security-conscious delivery environments

SFIA Level 5 capability - provides leadership, influences strategy, and drives quality improvements

Active SC clearance (mandatory)

Diversity and Inclusion

At Scrumconnect Consulting, we believe diversity drives innovation and stronger outcomes for our teams and clients. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where every individual is respected, valued, and supported. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.