Principal QA Engineer

About us.

We are The Very Group and we’re here to help families get more out of life. We know that our customers work hard for their families and have a lot to balance in their busy lives. That’s why we combine amazing brands and products with flexible payment options on Very.co.uk to help them say yes to the things they love. We’re just as passionate about helping our people get more out of life too; building careers with real growth, a sense of purpose, belonging and wellbeing.

About the role.

We’re looking for an experienced Principal QA Engineer to help shape the future of quality engineering across The Very Group.

As a Principal QA Engineer, you’ll play a hands-on role in designing, building, and maintaining the tools and frameworks that enable our teams to deliver high-quality, reliable, and secure solutions. You’ll work across Testing, Observability, and Security, helping squads embed quality automation and monitoring into their products from the ground up.

You’ll collaborate closely with Engineers, Tech Leads, Architects, and the wider QA community to drive best practices in reliability engineering. You’ll also champion the use of our observability platform and promote a culture of continuous improvement, automation, and technical excellence.

Key responsibilities

• Work with Engineers, Tech Leads, Engineering Managers, Architects, and the QA community to deliver high-quality solutions.
• Design and build solutions that balance commercial needs with the QA roadmap.
• Actively participate in platform, application, and database design.
• Own your code quality and support the quality of the wider team.
• Take ownership of non-functional requirements around performance, security, and scalability.
• Drive best practices in real-time logging, monitoring, and alerting.
• Actively promote the use of The Very Group’s observability platform.
• Create and maintain threat models for Performance Unit products.
• Continuously enhance CI processes to improve deployment efficiency.
• Identify and mitigate risks, obstacles, and issues impacting technical delivery.
• Adhere to and help shape policies and standards that guide solution development.
• Provide support for technical products within the Performance Unit and beyond.

About you.

You’re someone who thrives in a hands-on technical role and has a passion for building scalable, high-quality solutions. You’ve worked in a similar capacity and have a strong track record of enabling teams to deliver robust, secure, and observable systems.

You’re a natural collaborator who enjoys mentoring others, sharing knowledge, and influencing engineering culture. You’re comfortable working across squads and disciplines, and you’re always looking for ways to improve processes, reduce toil, and drive automation.

You’ll be confident in contributing to platform, application, and database design, and you’ll take ownership of non-functional requirements like performance, security, and scalability.

What you’ll bring:

• Considerable experience building, integrating, and managing complex solution architectures, ideally across multi-cloud environments
• Commercial experience with AWS (EC2, ECS, Lambda, Fargate) and Microsoft Azure services
• A working knowledge of the Elastic Observability platform (Elastic certification is a plus)
• Extensive experience building secure, scalable, and highly available software applications
• Strong understanding and application of threat modelling
• A background in hands-on software engineering with current, relevant experience
• A passion for code quality, testing, and engineering best practices
• Proven ability to influence and negotiate with technical stakeholders at all levels
• Demonstrable experience in coaching, mentoring, and providing development support
• A strong collaborator and communicator, comfortable working across teams and disciplines
• A Computer Science degree or equivalent experience

Our benefits.

• Flexible, hybrid working model
• Inclusive culture and environment, check out our Glassdoor reviews
• £1,000 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs
• 30 days holiday + bank holidays
• Udemy learning access
• Bonus potential (performance and business-related)
• Up to 25% discount on Very.co.uk
• Matched pension up to 6%
• More benefits can be found on our career site

How to apply

Please note that the talent acquisition team are managing this vacancy directly, and if successful in securing this role, you may be required to undertake a credit, CIFAS and DBS check.

What happens next?

Our talent acquisition team will be in touch if you’re successful so keep an eye on your emails! We’ll arrange a short call to learn more about you, as well as answer any questions you have. If it feels like we’re a good match, we’ll share your CV with the hiring manager to review. Our interview process is tailored to each role and can be in-person or held remotely.

You can expect a three-stage interview process for this position:

1st stage - An informal 45-minute video call with the hiring team to discuss your skills and relevant experience. This is a great opportunity to find out more about the role and to ask any questions you may have.

2nd Stage – A one-hour formal interview where you can expect both competency and technical questions

As an inclusive employer please do let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments.

If you'd like to know more about our interviews, you can find out here.

Equal opportunities

We’re an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.