HM Courts and Tribunals Service
Directorate: Digital Technology Services (DTS)
Pay Band: HEO
Job Title:
Test Engineer
Location: National
Successful applicants will be expected to be office based 3 days per week
in any HMCTS Office (subject to business availability).
Term:
Permanent
Interview: Video conference via Teams
Important salary details:
New recruits to the Civil Service joining MoJ are expected to join at the band minimum.
Existing Civil Servants applying on promotion, will usually be appointed on the salary
minimum of the new pay band, or receive an increase of 10 percent on the current base
salary, whichever is higher (This is restricted to the pay maximum of the new band).
GDD:
Government Digital and Data (GDD) Profession Capability Framework and Success Profiles
Frameworks. Using GDD we will then determine if you will be paid an additional allowance,
on top of your basic salary. This role is within the Quality assurance testing (QAT) Job Family,
is a Test engineer role at Tester (test engineer) level, and carries the title Test Engineer within
DTS.
Reserve List:
HMCTS run a Reserve List, where candidates who are unsuccessful at interview by only a
few points, can be offered other roles, at the same band, for up to 12 months. You will be able
to view your status via the application screen. If you have been added to the Reserve List,
your status will show either Merit or Reserve list.
Introduction:
These are exciting times at HM Court and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). As an agency of the
MoJ, we support the judiciary across England and Wales to deliver justice by running courts
and tribunals and processing outcomes, and we are looking for talented people to help us
achieve our ambitions. It will be challenging, important and rewarding.
HMCTS Digital and Technology Services (DTS) is a specialist technology directorate which
provides support to HMCTS in the use of IT and Digital.
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DTS is committed to being a great place to work and part of our offer is brilliant training
opportunities and support from expert colleagues. As well as that you’ll find flexible working,
an inclusive culture and a place where your opinion is valued.
Please follow the link below for further information about HMCTS.
www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-courts-and-tribunals-service
Job Description:
The Test Engineer reports to the Senior Test Manager and plays a key role in ensuring that
products are of quality and fit for the business needs. Without the input of the Test Engineer,
software can be released with poor quality and potential bugs that can impact HMCTS’s
reputation, have significant cost implications on the business and HMCTS and most
importantly people using the service/product. You will be assigned to Digital and Technology
Services Tooling Team where you will be managing within their functional work area and
alerting the Senior Test Manager of emerging issues and trends that have a wider impact
across HMCTS. The role will demand the use of discretion, interpretation, and collaboration
to identify and evaluate risks that emerge from testing and communicating them effectively to
the Senior Test Manager so that these risks can be mitigated.
Key Responsibilities:
• Complete test scripts in accordance to acceptance criteria and requirements to tight
deadlines.
• Manage full traceability of defects, tests and requirements. Report issues found
through the appropriate channels.
• Promote test-driven development and shift-left testing, champion test practices,
provide advice to other stakeholders on the different types of tests, testing tools and
testing environments available.
• Analyse the test results to identify simple patterns and trends. Investigate problems
and opportunities in existing functionality of the software, translate findings into impact
on the users and the Business.
• Constantly seek to learn and further develop your skills as required for your role. Share
knowledge with others. Participate in recruitment and procurement activities as
required.
• Test from / in the most suitable environments, including using different devices and
traveling on-site (in accordance with the organisation’s travel and accommodation
policies).
• Understand business processes and activities that impact and that are impacted by
the project and systems you are working on. Develop extensive knowledge in the
functionality of the systems you are working on, and integrated systems as is required.
• Use GUI based tools to create, update and run automation tests, as well as simple
scripting languages e.g., JavaScript to customise those tests.
• Manage UAT’s and ensure completion of test execution within tight deadlines.
• Enable planning by estimating your own effort. Practice the agreed methodology and
apply it to your work, identifying obvious deficiencies and supporting activities to
improve the performance in your area.
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Skills & Experience:
• Ability to contribute to improving delivery and understand the importance of evidence-
based design and analysis.
• Awareness of different test tools (bug tracking/defect management, load testing and
API inspection), ideally in our technology stack.
• Demonstrable knowledge of business domains and business processes of the systems
you tested, as well as how these are implemented in the system.
• You can plan, set realistic targets to test deliverables and regularly review progress to
improve performance and manage risks.
We are happy to help you learn our tools and tech stack (e.g., Azure) once you are part of
our team.
Essential Criteria:
• Collaborate with business analysts to make sure the required business scenarios are
covered in the User Acceptance Test scripts
• Write end to end User Acceptance Test Scripts
• Work with Developers in the testing/debugging process
• Meet tight testing deadlines and report any risk mitigation to the Senior Test Manager,
and to the wider Stakeholders
• Update/Maintain and run an automated test regression pack.
Desirable Criteria:
• You know about functional testing techniques. You can execute test scenarios and
identify defects, raising awareness of them. You know how to run tests others have
written and know the processes to do so. You understand a range of standard testing
techniques.
• You know about non-functional testing techniques. You can execute non-functional test
scenarios and identify defects. You can run non-functional tests others have written
and know the processes to do so. You understand a range of standard non-functional
testing techniques.
• Show an awareness of a range of tools and techniques for test automation e.g.,
scripting tests in JavaScript. Likely to have some demonstrable technical attributes.
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Application process:
The following areas of the Success Profile Framework will be used to assess and score your
application during the sift, and interview.
• Experience - As demonstrated in your application form.
• Behaviours - During the interview, you will be required to provide evidence of the
following key behaviours at HEO Level:
o Behaviour 1 - Delivering at Pace
o Behaviour 2 - Managing a Quality Service
• Technical - GDD Assessment - During the interview, you will be assessed against the
GDD skills and framework below:
o GDD Capability Framework Skill 1 - Functional testing
o GDD Capability Framework Skill 2 - Non-functional testing
o GDD Capability Framework Skill 3 - Technical breadth
o GDD Capability Framework Skill 4 - Test analysis
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