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

Project overview

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 lifecycle, working closely with software engineers, DevOps/platform engineers and other technical specialists.

Responsibilities

Essential experience

Desirable 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.

,

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Project details

• Start: flexible
• Remote: hybrid
• Location: Islington, GB
• Rate: 63-75 EUR/h