DevOps Test Automation Engineer (SDET) (SC or DV Cleared)

DevOps Test Automation Engineer (SDET) - AWS/Python/Terraform

Active SC or DV Clearance Required | AWS Certified | Inside IR35 | Predominantly Remote

We are supporting a secure central government programme looking for an experienced DevOps Test Automation Engineer/SDET to join a highly technical, cloud-native engineering team.

This is not a conventional manual or functional testing role.

The team need an engineer who can bridge test automation, quality engineering and DevOps-someone comfortable writing Python, working inside CI/CD pipelines, validating AWS infrastructure and deployments, and testing APIs, microservices and event-driven systems.

The wider engineering environment includes Python, AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes/EKS, CI/CD, APIs, microservices and distributed systems.

The role

You will design and implement automated quality controls throughout the software-development life cycle, working closely with software engineers, DevOps/platform engineers and other technical specialists.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Designing and developing Python-based automation frameworks for API, integration, contract, service and web testing.

• Embedding automated tests, smoke checks and quality gates into CI/CD pipelines.

• Testing AWS-hosted applications, cloud-native services and infrastructure changes.

• Validating Terraform deployments, environment configuration and operational readiness.

• Testing APIs, microservices, messaging platforms and event-driven integrations.

• Working with containerised environments using Docker, Kubernetes and Amazon EKS.

• Performing API and contract testing using tools such as Postman, Pact and REST automation libraries.

• Testing asynchronous and distributed systems, including Kafka or AWS messaging services.

• Diagnosing failures across application code, pipelines, infrastructure, logs and environments.

• Supporting functional and non-functional testing across performance, security, resilience and reliability.

Essential experience

• Active UKSV SC or DV clearance.

• A current and verifiable AWS certification.

• Strong hands-on experience within AWS engineering environments.

• Commercial experience as an SDET, DevOps Test Engineer, Test Automation Engineer or cloud-focused Quality Engineer.

• Strong Python development and test-automation experience.

• Terraform or broader infrastructure-as-code experience.

• CI/CD pipeline experience using Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps or comparable tooling.

• Advanced API, integration and contract-testing experience.

• Experience testing microservices, distributed systems or event-driven architectures.

• Knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes and preferably Amazon EKS.

• Experience within a secure, regulated or complex public-sector environment.

Desirable experience

• Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Cucumber, Behave, SpecFlow or RestAssured.

• Pact contract testing.

• Kafka or comparable streaming and messaging technology.

• AWS Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, EC2, EKS, S3 or CloudWatch.

• Performance testing using JMeter.

• Ansible, JFrog and observability tooling.

• ISTQB, ISEB, CSTE or another relevant testing qualification.

• Previous central government, policing, defence or justice experience.

Important

This position will not suit someone whose recent experience is predominantly manual testing, UAT coordination or test management.

We need a technically hands-on engineer who can work across Python code, APIs, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform, AWS infrastructure and automated testing.

Please apply with details of your current clearance, AWS certification, availability and relevant hands-on technical experience.