Principal Engineer QA

Overview

Because we strive to put people first. Culture, our way.

What’s a career at Primark all about? The positive impact you’re making, the experiences you’re having and the people you’re with. You’re our inspiration. Embrace what sets you apart, own your career and develop in ways you never expected. Leave your mark. And do it your way.

People are at the heart of what we do here, so it’s essential we provide you with the right environment to perform at your very best.

Let’s talk lifestyle:
Healthcare, pension, and potential bonus. 27 days of leave, plus bank holidays and if you want, you can buy 5 more. Because Primark is all about tailoring to you, we offer Tax Saver Tickets, fitness centre, and a subsidised cafeteria.

We want you to feel challenged and inspired. Here, you’ll develop your skills across a range of responsibilities:

• Establish and lead the Quality Centre of Excellence, defining the enterprise quality vision, operating model, and roadmap, and owning the Enterprise Test Strategy aligned to business priorities and technology architecture.
• Champion modern quality engineering and innovation, embedding shift-left testing, automation, CI/CD-integrated quality, BDD/TDD frameworks, quality observability, and exploring emerging capabilities such as AI-assisted testing and predictive analytics.
• Drive enterprise-wide quality consistency, partnering across all technology domains, architecture, and platforms to embed quality into foundational design decisions, roadmaps, vendor selection, and non-functional requirements (performance, security, accessibility, resilience).
• Define and govern QA vendor strategy, including capability assessment, performance metrics, governance models, and commercial frameworks, while optimising cost through automation, smart resourcing, and efficient test-data management.
• Establish metrics, insights, and governance, implementing enterprise KPIs, quality gates, dashboards, and post-implementation reviews to balance speed to market with risk management and enable data-driven continuous improvement.

Build quality engineering capability and culture, through coaching, mentoring, training programs, and talent development, fostering a shared ownership mindset where quality is everyone’s responsibility.

Here at Primark, we want everyone to feel valued so please bring your authentic self to work, of course with some other key experience and abilities for this role in particular:

• Proven leadership experience in complex technology environments, with a strong record of success in senior quality engineering roles spanning multi-platform, enterprise-scale systems.
• Demonstrable expertise establishing and leading Quality Centres of Excellence, driving transformational quality initiatives, maturity uplift, and consistent standards across domains and delivery partners.
• Deep technical knowledge of modern quality engineering, including automation frameworks, CI/CD integration, shift-left testing strategies, and embedding quality throughout Agile and Dev Ops SDLCs.
• Strong understanding of retail technology ecosystems, including e-commerce, POS, mobile, warehouse management, and ERP platforms, and how quality must adapt across customer and operational systems.
• Exceptional strategic and analytical capability, able to translate business objectives into measurable quality strategies, governance models, and delivery outcomes.
• Outstanding communication and stakeholder leadership, with experience influencing at C-level, managing global vendor partnerships, and clearly articulating complex technical concepts across organisational boundaries

Does this sound like you? Great, because we can’t wait to see what you’ll bring. You’ll be supported within a team of equally capable people, celebrating who you are and aiding you reach your potential. At Primark, we’re excited about our future - and we’re excited to develop yours.

At Primark, people matter. They’re the beating heart of our business and the reason we’ve grown from our first store in Dublin in 1969 to a £9bn+ turnover business and over 80,000…