Lead quality engineering for Zinc by identifying product risks, creating regression strategies and test tooling, improving CI/CD testing, coaching engineers, embedding quality practices across the SDLC, reporting quality metrics, and hiring a small quality team. The role emphasizes JavaScript/TypeScript automation, end-to-end testing, mocking complex systems, and maintaining compliance in a customer-facing platform.
Zinc is looking for a Quality Lead to improve the quality of our product and the way we test it. This is the first hire into a new team, and it's an exciting place to come in: you'll define what Quality Engineering looks like at Zinc. 🚀
Zinc runs a Quality Assistance model. Engineers own the quality of what they ship, and that ownership sits at the same level as anyone whose job title has the word quality in it. You'll be the person who makes that model work, and who builds the foundation underneath it.
The early months are about getting close to the codebase and the team. You'll work out where quality breaks down today, and build the regression coverage that catches those failures before a customer ever sees them. A large part of the job is coaching engineers to test their own work well. As the function settles, you'll start hiring a small team around you.
Zinc runs a Quality Assistance model. Engineers own the quality of what they ship, and that ownership sits at the same level as anyone whose job title has the word quality in it. You'll be the person who makes that model work, and who builds the foundation underneath it.
The early months are about getting close to the codebase and the team. You'll work out where quality breaks down today, and build the regression coverage that catches those failures before a customer ever sees them. A large part of the job is coaching engineers to test their own work well. As the function settles, you'll start hiring a small team around you.
Key Responsibilities 🗝️
Key Responsibilities 🗝️
- Finding where quality breaks down 🔍 – Assess problem areas across the product and the engineering process, and work out where the real risk is concentrated.
- Building the safety net 🛡️ – Design and maintain regression test plans that give the team the confidence to ship at pace.
- Coaching engineers to test 🎓 – Train and support engineers so that good testing happens inside the pull request, which is what makes Quality Assistance actually work.
- Solving the hard cases 🧩 – Devise tools and approaches for the complicated scenarios that standard testing patterns can't reach.
- Building reliable test environments 🛠️ – Work with third-party tools to create mock systems and dependable test scenarios for the parts of the platform that are hardest to get at.
- Raising the bar across the SDLC 📈 – Introduce and embed quality best practices at every stage of the software development life cycle.
- Reporting on quality 📊 – Track and report the metrics that show how healthy the product really is, then use them to find the next process improvement.
- Building the team 🌱 – Grow a team of two to four people, starting with the hiring.
Skills, Knowledge and Expertise 🚀
Skills, Knowledge and Expertise 🚀
Hard skills ⚡
- Quality Assistance 🧪 – Experience embedding quality practice inside engineering teams, where the engineers do the testing and your job is to raise their ceiling.
- Test Strategy & Regression Planning 📋 – You've designed testing strategy and regression plans from a blank page, for a product already in customers' hands.
- Test Tooling & Mocking 🔧 – Comfortable with third-party tools for building mocks and dependable scenarios across complex or awkward systems.
- Compliance Experience ✅ – You've worked inside a compliance-driven organisation, and you understand how compliance gets maintained within a platform over time rather than signed off once.
- Metrics & Reporting 📈 – You can define and report the quality metrics that give leadership a genuine read on product health.
- Teciuca
Tech Stack 💻
• JavaScript / TypeScript — day-to-day language for writing and maintaining automated tests. Comfort
here is a requirement, not a nice-to-have.
• Cypress- front-end end-to-end testing — already in use at Zinc, so the person inherits this rather than
choosing it.
• Playwright — or an equivalent JS-based E2E framework. Named alongside Cypress as the kind of tooling
we want more depth in.
• Jest — back-end testing.
• Vitest — front-end component testing.
• CircleCI / CI-CD — comfortable in pipelining work
Soft skills ✨
- A Natural Teacher 👩🏫 – You get real satisfaction from raising the skill level of the engineers around you, and you're patient with the people who need it most.
- Highly Collaborative 🌊 – You work inside engineering every day, alongside product and design, and you treat quality as something the whole team carries.
- Process-Minded 🎯 – You spot the opportunities to improve how we work across the SDLC, and you know how to land a change once you've found it.
- Kind & Supportive ❤️ – You build a positive, respectful culture around you, lifting others up and working with humility.
What we offer 🍉
- 24 days holiday + Bank Holidays + your birthday off 🎉
- £1200 annual benefits allowance (ThanksBen, from month 2)
- Early finish Fridays (16:00)
- Yearly company retreat abroad ✈️
- 30 days to Work from anywhere 🌍
- Enhanced Maternity, Paternity, and Adoption Leave (13 weeks full pay, 17 weeks half pay, then SMP for maternity, 1 month full pay for paternity/adoption) 🐣
- Statutory pension with NEST (3% employer, 5% employee)
- Zinc shares, issued through the EMI Scheme
- Unlimited access to Spill Therapy
- Company socials, quarterly team socials Free Monday lunches
- Nursery workplace benefit scheme (Yellownest)
- Option to lease an electric car through Electric Car Scheme
- Celebrated Zinc anniversaries 🥳
About
Who are Zinc? ⚡️We believe in better background checking: making them easy, instant and delightful - for candidates and HR teams across the world 🌎. Founded in 2017, we've grown year-on-year, reaching the Times Top 100 fastest growing businesses, the Deloitte EMEA fast 500 and winning the 2026 HSBC x WIRED Award in the Trailblazers Category.But we're not all work, our founders Luke and Charlotte are hot on being a culture first business. By this, we don't just mean an active calendar of company and team events (although these are great! 🍻 🥂🍕🎯) - our culture is defined by respect, fostering support for new ideas, promoting flexible work environments and operating with autonomy and low ego. 🔥💥❤️It's not just us who think they've done a stellar job - we've won awards for being a Top Place To Work in 2025 and 2026 from Tembo and SeedLegals 💚What are our values? 🧩🧩🧩Our values are: Pragmatism, Integrity, Empathy, Collaboration, Empowerment and Speed. We call them the PIECES that make Zinc (see what we did there 😂).How do we work? 🧑🏽💻👩🏼💻👨🏿💻We operate on a hybrid working model, with everyone coming to our Shoreditch Offices on Mondays and Thursdays, and working from home on the others. We believe this is a great balance between having space for deep work and in-person collaboration ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Similar Jobs
Energy • Renewable Energy
Lead the development and daily execution of Alva's nuclear quality assurance program. Responsibilities include creating NQA-1 and ISO 9001 procedures, managing suppliers and consultants, conducting audits, maintaining approved supplier records, overseeing nonconformance and corrective actions, supporting commercial-grade dedication and Part 21 processes, preparing quality records, and serving as the primary contact for utilities, suppliers, and NRC inspectors.
Top Skills:
10 Cfr 50 Appendix B10 Cfr Part 21Asme Nqa-1Iso 45001Iso 9001Nqa-1Nupic
Aerospace • Defense
Owns governance, quality, lifecycle management, and stewardship of Customer master data in SAP. Develops policies and standards, manages data changes, improves data integrity and quality, tracks performance, resolves root causes, and leads improvement initiatives. Partners with data owners and cross-functional stakeholders, provides subject matter expertise, supports Order-to-Cash processes, delivers training, and promotes a data-driven culture.
Top Skills:
SAP
Artificial Intelligence • Healthtech • Social Impact • Biotech
Lead end-to-end User Acceptance Testing across IT projects and BAU releases. Develop UAT strategies, plans, criteria, scripts, and schedules; coordinate business testers; manage execution, defects, risks, and stakeholder sign-off. Provide release readiness and go/no-go recommendations, post-release verification, governance, metrics, and continuous improvement. The role partners with business, delivery, and technology teams and supports test automation, tooling, audit, regulatory, and change-management requirements.
Top Skills:
AgileAlmAzure DevopsDevOpsItilJIRASdlcTestrailWaterfallZephyr
What you need to know about the London Tech Scene
London isn't just a hub for established businesses; it's also a nursery for innovation. Boasting one of the most recognized fintech ecosystems in Europe, attracting billions in investments each year, London's success has made it a go-to destination for startups looking to make their mark. Top U.K. companies like Hoptin, Moneybox and Marshmallow have already made the city their base — yet fintech is just the beginning. From healthtech to renewable energy to cybersecurity and beyond, the city's startups are breaking new ground across a range of industries.
