Lead Quality Engineer - Automation & AI

Overview

Job Title: Lead Quality Engineer - Automation & AI

Location: Bexhill/Leicester/London – Hybrid

Welcome to Hastings Direct

We’re a digital insurance provider with ambitious plans to become the best and biggest in the UK market. We’ve made huge investments in our pricing and data capabilities over the past few years, along with nurturing our 4

Cs culture. We provide insurance for over four million customers, and we value curiosity, collaboration and constructive challenge within our Pricing, Data and Analytics community.

Pricing is a strategic capability built on risk insight, data and analytics. Our aim is to ensure customers receive a fair and accurate price based on their individual risk, while delivering sustainable and profitable growth for our company.

The Role:

We are seeking a senior, hands-on QA leader to drive technological transformation of testing across our pricing platforms. This role is responsible for improving quality, pace, and confidence of delivery through modern testing techniques, automation, and AI-enabled approaches, while leading and developing a high-performing QA function. The role operates across our in-house based rating engine and Azure/Git Hub-based engineering landscape. Working closely with pricing engineers, ML engineers, and underwriting teams, you will modernise how testing is designed, executed, and governed, reducing duplication of effort and materially lowering post-live issues.

This role combines hands-on technical involvement, strong people leadership, and strategic ownership of testing capability, tooling, and environments.

• Lead end-to-end QA strategy and execution across all underwriting lines of business, ensuring testing supports high-quality delivery at pace.
• Design, implement, and continuously evolve the QA strategy covering pre-live testing, post-release monitoring, and live issue investigation, with a focus on improving quality, pace, and confidence of delivery.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership in reviewing test strategies, automation design, and investigation of complex or high-impact defects, including interrogation of rating behaviour and data inputs.
• Lead the strategic and practical use of test automation, ensuring automation is targeted, maintainable, and focused on the highest-risk areas.
• Drive improvements in automation and tooling to reduce manual effort and strengthen preventative quality controls, applying AI-assisted techniques where they provide clear, measurable benefit.
• Work closely with pricing engineers and ML teams to apply AI-assisted testing techniques where they add value, ensuring solutions are governed and suitable for a regulated environment.
• Own post-release quality activities, including monitoring, alerting, and validation of controls, ensuring issues are detected early and feedback loops are effective.
• Improve the efficiency, stability, and reliability of QA test environments to enable comprehensive data testing with minimal environment-related failures.
• Support incident RCA activity by providing testing insight, evidence, and analysis, and ensure learnings are embedded into improved testing practices.
• Line-manage QA Leads and the Automation Manager, providing clear direction, prioritisation, coaching, and performance support.
• Ensure QA activities are focused on preventing customer harm and supporting compliance with regulatory and internal governance requirements.
• Maintain strong communication and organisational discipline to manage multiple initiatives and report progress, risks, and outcomes clearly and consistently.
• Develop and maintain QA documentation, standards, and artefacts to ensure testing practices are consistent, auditable, and aligned with internal and regulatory requirements.
• Define and track quality metrics such as defect trends, test effectiveness, automation coverage, and release readiness to support data-driven decisions.
• Support recruitment and development of QA talent through active hiring involvement, regular one-to-one engagement, mentoring, and creating an environment where team members can perform and grow.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science,…