Lead Non-Functional Test Engineer

The Non‑Functional Test Engineer is a senior, hands‑on role responsible for owning and driving the complete non‑functional testing agenda across enterprise applications, ETL platforms, SAP systems, and cloud-based environments. With deep expertise in performance, infrastructure, and security testing, this role ensures that systems are resilient, scalable, secure, and production‑ready. The engineer will design and execute complex performance tests, validate infrastructure readiness across environments, perform security assessments, and define non‑functional acceptance criteria that align with architectural and business expectations.

In addition to leading non‑functional testing, the role provides offshore coordination for functional QA activities, managing a distributed testing team, overseeing the defect lifecycle, ensuring requirement traceability, and maintaining clear communication with onshore stakeholders. This position requires strong leadership, technical depth, and the ability to troubleshoot problems across applications, APIs, databases, servers, and cloud platforms.

The engineer will act as the go‑to SME for all non‑functional testing efforts from India, supporting delivery in a fast-paced Agile environment and contributing to the stability, reliability, and performance of critical enterprise systems. Experience in utilities (energy, water, gas, smart metering) is a strong advantage, but consultants with deep enterprise testing skills across other industries are also well‑suited for this role.

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We're looking for a hands-on Non-Functional Test Engineer with 8+ years of experience across Performance, Infrastructure, and Security Testing. You'll also be expected to manage functional testing activities from offshore.Day to day, you'll own the non-functional testing agenda making sure our enterprise apps, ETL platforms, SAP systems, and cloud environments actually work under pressure, stay secure, and are ready for production. On the functional side, you'll coordinate the offshore QA team, handle defect triage, and keep onshore stakeholders in the loop with clear reporting.Utilities experience (energy, water, gas, smart metering) is a strong plus, but we'll consider solid candidates from other enterprise backgrounds.You'll lead a small offshore team and be the go-to person for all non-functional testing activities on the India side.

Key Responsibilities

Non-Functional Testing (Primary):

• Plan and run performance tests load, stress, endurance, spike, scalability
• Find bottlenecks and work with dev and infra teams on fixes
• Validate infrastructure across Dev, QA, UAT, and Prod environments
• Check server configs, cloud deployments (Azure/AWS), networking, and CI/CD pipelines
• Run vulnerability assessments and make sure we meet standards
• Test authentication, authorisation, encryption, and API security
• Set non-functional acceptance criteria, SLAs, and benchmarks with architects and product owners
• Write and maintain performance test scripts, test data, and reusable frameworks
• Handle reliability testing failover, disaster recovery, basic chaos engineering
• Support accessibility testing where needed Functional Test Management (Offshore Coordination):
• Run the offshore functional test team assign work, track progress, remove blockers
• Review test plans, test cases, and traceability matrices
• Own the defect lifecycle triage, prioritisation, chase resolution
• Send daily/weekly test reports and dashboards to onshore leads
• Make sure test coverage maps back to business requirements
• Be the single point of contact for offshore testing
• Run knowledge transfer sessions and keep test documentation up to date
• Look after test environments provisioning, test data, data masking
• Handle API and integration testing (REST/SOAP) using Postman, REST Assured, or similar

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Technical Skills We Need

Performance & Load Testing:

• JMeter, LoadRunner, Gatling, or k6 must be hands-on
• APM/monitoring: Grafana, Dynatrace, App Insights, or similar
• Solid understanding of workload modelling and test design patterns Infrastructure & Cloud:
• Comfortable with Linux and Windows server environments
• Azure or AWS compute, networking, storage, deployments
• CI/CD: Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI, or similar
• Docker/Kubernetes basics (nice to have) Security Testing:
• Burp Suite, or similar scanning tools
• Familiar with OWASP, SAST/DAST, and API security testing

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Databases:

API & Integration Testing:

• Postman, REST Assured, SoapUI, or similar
• Experience checking API contracts, response times, error handling, data integrity

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Reporting:

• Confluence or SharePoint for documentation
• Power BI or Excel for dashboards and metrics

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Ways of Working:

• Worked in Agile teams (Scrum/Kanban); SAFe exposure a plus
• Understands shift-left testing and continuous testing in CI/CD

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What We're Looking For (Beyond Technical)

• Has actually managed offshore or distributed QA teams before
• Communicates clearly can work effectively across UK and India
• Comfortable presenting to senior stakeholders and clients
• Good at digging into problems and getting to root cause
• Can get on with things without needing to be chased

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Nice to Have

• ISTQB certification (Foundation or Advanced Performance Testing)
• Tested SAP, ETL/data pipelines, or enterprise integration platforms
• Worked with shift-left or DevSecOps practices
• Used service virtualisation tools (WireMock, Mountebank)
• Knows about observability and SRE
• Utilities domain smart metering, SAP IS-U/CCS, meter-to-cash, field service, energy retail
• Regulatory/compliance testing in utilities (Ofgem, market messaging, industry data flows)
• Chaos engineering tools (Chaos Monkey, Gremlin, LitmusChaos)
• Accessibility tools (Axe, WAVE, Lighthouse)

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