Test Automation Lead

Responsibilities / Critical Deliverables

• Define, refine and implement the enterprise automation strategy and operating model. Own principles, guardrails, standards, governance and best practices across BAU, Projects and Vendors, with clear ownership, adoption reviews and alignment to the Aurizon QA Framework.
• Maintain a prioritised implementation and coverage roadmap based on business risk, application criticality and delivery demand. Establish coverage baselines, milestones and measurable targets; manage the backlog and demonstrate progress through completed automation increments.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines with risk-appropriate execution triggers, results and evidence. Establish reliable regression release gates, maintain entry and exit criteria, and manage failed runs and exceptions with delivery teams.
• Design, maintain and evolve scalable automation frameworks and reusable assets. Govern tooling, licensing and versions, including the existing Tosca and Playwright estate; review code, monitor framework health and stability, and maintain a prioritised technical-debt backlog for sustainable delivery.
• Triage the regression estate into automate, retain-manual or retire, and deliver uplift in prioritised waves against defined acceptance criteria. Reduce flaky tests, improve execution time and maintain reliable suites as applications and business processes change.
• Design, build and maintain UI, API, back-end, integration and end-to-end tests across complex enterprise workflows. Cover authentication, authorisation, error handling and business-critical scenarios using fit-for-purpose code-based and platform tooling.
• Coordinate environment readiness, test data management and service virtualisation for repeatable automated
• execution. Work with environment owners and cyber security to resolve dependencies and apply appropriate data and access controls. 8. Lead and mentor automation engineers across teams through hands-on delivery, code reviews and technical guidance. Embed shift-left testing alongside user stories and build shared practices, documentation and reusable assets to reduce single-person dependencies.
• Analyse defects, incidents and automated test failures to distinguish product issues from test or environment faults. Close risk-based coverage gaps and track corrective actions that improve suite stability and reduce escaped defects.
• Coordinate automation delivery and capacity across BAU, Projects and Vendors. Align priorities and dependencies, provide release-gate recommendations supported by test evidence, and escalate unresolved quality risks and coverage gaps.
• Assure the quality and coverage of automation delivered by vendors, system integrators and delivery partners. Review assets, results and traceability against agreed standards and entry/exit criteria; close gaps and confirm maintainability, asset ownership and handover readiness.
• Report coverage, pass rate, execution time, flakiness, defect escape rate and manual effort displaced, with baselines and quality trends. Assess automation maturity, business value and release risk, and supply evidence for business-case development and benefits tracking to the QA & Testing Manager and governance forums.