QA Automation Engineer

Department: ITV Studios | Global Partnerships (Zoo 55 Tech Squad)

Contract Type: 12-Month Fixed-Term Contract (FTC)

Location: White City, London | Hybrid - 3 days on site

Hiring Range: £50,000 - £60,000

About Zoo 55

Zoo 55 is an ITV Studios company established to drive global audience expansion and commercial growth across the digital media ecosystem. Operating at the intersection of content, culture, and technology, Zoo 55 creates, curates, and distributes ITV Studios’ iconic IP across four core pillars: FAST & DTC, Social Video, Gaming & Gambling (including Metavision), and Digital Marketing. Joining Zoo 55 means working in an agile, high-velocity environment alongside industry-leading creative and technical talent to scale world-class media platforms globally.

The Team

Global Partnerships Technology works in direct alignment with Zoo 55 to build the next generation of scalable media distribution platforms. The Zoo 55 Tech Squad is a dedicated delivery team established to industrialise foundational media workflows, eliminate manual operational drag, and build the scalable infrastructure required to support expanding global media operations. The team is responsible for delivering Phase 1 technical enhancements, including a Central Work Board, Cloud NAS infrastructure, an Ingest Portal, and automated pre-match media scripting.

The Role

As the QA Automation Engineer for the Zoo 55 Tech Squad, you will champion a 'shift-left' quality approach, ensuring that our Phase 1 infrastructure and ingest portals are highly reliable before reaching operational teams. You will design, build, and maintain automated test suites for both frontend tools and backend media automation scripts, serving as the gatekeeper for platform stability.

Main Responsibilities

• Test Automation Strategy: Design, develop, and implement the automated testing strategy for the Zoo 55 Phase 1 deliverables, including the Ingest Portal and media scripting.
• Framework Creation: Build robust end-to-end and API testing frameworks using tools like Cypress, Playwright, or Postman.
• Pipeline Integration: Integrate automated test suites into the squad's CI/CD pipelines to ensure continuous quality checks on every code commit.
• Defect Management: Identify, document, and track software defects in Jira, working directly with platform engineers to investigate and resolve root causes.
• Performance & Load Testing: Conduct basic load and performance testing on Cloud NAS and ingest endpoints to ensure they meet operational volume requirements.
• Acceptance Criteria Validation: Collaborate with the Technical BA to define testable acceptance criteria for user stories and execute sprint-level testing.

Skills You’ll Need (Minimum Criteria)

• Extensive experience in software quality assurance, with a strong focus on test automation.
• Hands-on experience building test automation frameworks for both web applications (UI) and RESTful APIs.
• Proficiency in writing automation scripts using JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, or Java.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, Jenkins).

Other Things We’re Looking For (Key Criteria)

• ISEB/ISTQB foundation certification or equivalent QA industry qualifications.
• Experience testing media processing workflows, file transfer systems, or large-scale data pipelines.
• Deep understanding of agile testing methodologies and BDD (Behavior-Driven Development).