Lead QA Engineer

Who We Are

VML is a leading creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce, creating connected brands to drive growth. VML is celebrated for its innovative and award-winning human-first work for clients including AstraZeneca, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Ford, Microsoft, Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company, and Wendy's. In 2026, VML was named Campaign’s Global Network of the Year and ranked #2 Creative Network of the Year at Cannes Lions. VML’s global network spans 55+ markets with principal offices in Buenos Aires, Kansas City, London, New York, São Paulo, Shanghai and Singapore. 

VML is part of WPP, the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. Powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform WPP Open, WPP unites cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, creativity, production, enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel. 

For more information, please visit www.vml.com and follow along on LinkedIn  #WeAreVML.

The opportunity:

We're looking for a Lead QA Engineer to be the technical authority on complex accounts. This is a hands-on technical leadership role-you'll architect automation frameworks, solve the hard problems, and set the technical direction for QA on your engagements, as well as being an active member of the QA community.

You're the person the team turns to when things get complicated. You've built automation from the ground up, you understand the trade-offs, and you know how to design solutions that scale. You lead through expertise-raising the bar technically and helping others grow through mentorship and demonstration.

You're also an innovator. You're actively using AI tools to accelerate your work and you're thinking about what's next-whether that's self-healing tests, smarter automation, or new approaches to quality. You don't just follow best practice; you help shape it.

And beyond the technical, you're a confident communicator who can hold your own with senior client stakeholders-explaining approaches, trade-offs, and recommendations to influence decisions at a project level.

What you’ll be doing:

• Be the technical lead for QA on complex engagements-owning test strategy and the automation approach
• Architect, build, and evolve automation frameworks that others can rely on and contribute to
• Own and solve the hard technical problems-test architecture, flaky tests, CI/CD integration, environment issues
• Set the technical direction for QA on your accounts-tooling, approach, and structure
• Drive shift-left practices, embedding quality into requirements, design, and development
• Design and execute test strategies across UI, functional, integration, API, accessibility and regression testing
• Mentor and elevate QA engineers through hands-on collaboration and knowledge sharing
• Innovate with AI-using modern tools to work smarter and exploring what's next for QA
• Communicate technical recommendations and trade-offs to clients and internal teams
• Participate in client-facing forums-demos, triage, release calls, and technical discussions
• Contribute to a specialism and share knowledge across the wider QA community

What we want from you:

• A clear track record in automation architecture and technical problem-solving
• Solid experience testing in complex, transactional environments
• Proficient in Playwright and TypeScript
• You've designed frameworks from scratch-not just written tests, but built the foundations
• Comfortable working across the full stack-Web apps, Native Apps, APIs, backends, logs, data
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf) and associated best practices.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD and how testing fits into modern delivery
• Experience working within agile scrum environments on complex, multi-stream deliveries
• Confident communicating technical concepts to clients, developers, and stakeholders
• A genuine continuous learner-curious, experimental, always evolving
• Pragmatic and delivery-focused, but motivated by a good technical challenge

If you know some of this even better:

• Experience building AI-powered testing capabilities
• A QA specialism you're passionate about
• Experience working across distributed teams
• Contributions to tooling, frameworks, or knowledge sharing beyond your immediate team

What we can offer you:

Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are.

Our culture thrives on our core values, designed for impact-driven individuals: Heart, Brains and Courage.

We lead with Heart, fostering empathy and trust where genuine connections and human-centric work flourish.

We empower your Brains  for innovation, valuing relentless curiosity and collaborative intelligence to solve complex challenges.

And we champion  Courage, inspiring you to speak up, embrace experimentation, and advocate for bold solutions that push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

AT VML Enterprise Solutions

Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world’s leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi-channel growth for world-leading brands.

We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes-Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We’ve built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business.

As our business grows internationally, we’re looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client’s successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team.

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office an average of four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

WPP (VML) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers. 

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