Software Test Engineer – Full-time, Permanent
Location: Poole, Dorset – four days per week onsite, with one day working from home
Salary: £35-40,000 per annum, negotiable depending on experience, plus benefits
The Opportunity:
If you work in QA, you may know how frustrating it is to be brought in at the end of a project, handed a release, and expected to find everything that could go wrong without having had the opportunity to influence it earlier.
This Software Test Engineer role gives you the chance to be involved much sooner – working alongside developers, product specialists and DevOps throughout the delivery cycle, rather than simply testing what has already been built.
You’ll join an established software company that is investing in modern development tools and testing approaches. You’ll have the opportunity to shape test coverage, explore how features behave in the real world, raise risks early and help improve how quality is built into complex software – not simply checked at the end.
The work is varied, spanning web, mobile and API-based applications. You’ll combine thoughtful manual and exploratory testing with automation, working on software that is used at scale, and solving the kind of problems that keep the role interesting.
So, if you enjoy digging into how things work, spotting the detail that others may miss, and want to work somewhere your input can influence the quality of the product, this could be a very rewarding next step.
Why This Role Stands Out:
- Salary is £35000 – £40,000 per annum depending on experience
- Annual salary reviews with regular market benchmarking
- Hybrid working – 1 day per week remote from home
- 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays
- 2 volunteer days per year
- Pension scheme – 4% employer, 4% employee contributions, plus optional extra 1% matched
- Health Cash Plan including 24/7 GP access and consultations
- Dental and optical cover
- Death in Service cover (4x salary) plus extras, including will writing
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Cycle to work scheme
- Discretionary bonus
- Modern office environment and collaborative culture
- Team events, knowledge sharing and continuous learning opportunities
- High levels of autonomy, trust and ownership
- Structured training and development opportunities to help you grow
- The opportunity to influence technical strategy within a growing technology business
What You’ll Bring to the Software Test Engineer Role:
- Strong knowledge of QA methodologies and the software testing lifecycle.
- Hands-on experience of manual testing across web, mobile and/or API-based applications.
- Exposure to automated testing, or a genuine interest in developing further in this area.
- The ability to create clear test cases, investigate issues thoroughly and communicate defects and outcomes effectively.
- Experience working with test plans, defect management and modern software-delivery workflows in an Agile or Scrum environment.
- SQL knowledge for database validation and testing, alongside an analytical and investigative approach to problem-solving.
Useful, but not essential: Jira, Postman, Selenium, AWS, API testing, cloud-based environments and experience working closely with DevOps teams.
You do not need to match every preferred technology listed. If you have strong testing fundamentals, enjoy investigating problems, and want to broaden your technical capability, the company would be interested in hearing from you.
Why You Should Apply:
This is not a role where QA sits at the edge of the delivery process. You’ll work closely with the people building and supporting the product, with the space to investigate properly, raise risks early, and contribute ideas that improve quality over time.
As a Software Test Engineer, you’ll have the support to develop your expertise across manual, exploratory and automated testing, while gaining exposure to a broad range of technologies and delivery challenges.
If that sounds like the kind of QA Engineer role you have been looking for, apply now or get in touch for a confidential, no-pressure conversation to find out more.
We welcome applications from neurodivergent candidates and are happy to discuss reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.
Please note that telephone calls are scheduled by appointment only.