Test Assurance Lead Outside IR35

Contract Term: 6 months

Contracting Authority: The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

Location: Hybrid - London, Milton Keynes, East Kilbride - 2 days per week in office

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DfID) merged on 1 September 2020 to form the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

The FCDO pursues our national interests and projects the UK as a force for good in the world. We promote the interests of British citizens, safeguard the UK's security, defend our values, reduce poverty and tackle global challenges with our international partners.

FCDO Test Assurance Manager's main responsibility will be to provide test assurance services to FCDO KTD (Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office Knowledge and Technology Directorate). This translates to giving a transparent layer of assurance, interfacing between KTD and managed suppliers to promote efficiency, quality and value for money across all the services provided.

As a Test Assurance Lead your main responsibilities would be:

• Take ownership of the quality assurance and testing strategy as part of a broader risk-based approach.
• Take ownership for delivery, create strategy and lead implementation.
• Be responsible for test improvement and optimisation; promote and advocate test capabilities internally; make important decisions relating to test within the context of the delivery environment.
• Review and provide test assurance approval for test assurance related artefacts.
• Provide provision of "Strategic Test Framework" for deliveries to follow.
• Provide provision of templates for testing related artefacts.
• Provide test assurance for live service Operational Changes to all portfolio components.
• Identify improvements in the operation changes space and provide support to enable meeting the end goal of "first time right" to gain test assurance approval.

You'll have relevant experience in:

• Active SC Clearance
• Designing and executing a wide range of functional and non-functional testing techniques and communicate test results to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Making decisions on the environment for testing and coach others.
• Identifying defects, alerting the business to them, and help prioritise them based on defect severity.
• Executing non-functional test scenarios and identify defects and run non-functional tests others have written and know the processes to do so.
• Thinking creatively, ask the right questions and critically evaluate and communicate findings to a larger team.
• Lead investigative work into problems and opportunities in existing processes then driving the collection of information and creation of recommendations for improvements.
• Being able to break down complicated technical information to non-technical audience with right level of detail in both written and verbal forms
• Proactivity and enthusiasm for the role - a passion for testing and assurance
• A team player - able to form and build networks not just within the portfolio but also the wider FCDO and beyond.

If this role sounds like something that you would be interested in, please click the link to apply or email .

"In applying for this role you acknowledge the following; this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment, and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different."

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.