QA Automation Engineer - Playwright / Cypress (Contract)

You'll be the person who stops broken code reaching production on services thousands of people depend on. We're hiring a QA / Test Automation Engineer to own automated testing across a large regulated UK organisation's platform, building quality in from the start rather than catching problems at the end.

What you'll do:

• Build and maintain automated test suites with Playwright and Cypress.

• Wire tests into CI so quality is checked on every change.

• Work with engineers to build testing in from the start, not bolt it on at the end.

• Help set the quality bar across the programme.

What we're looking for:

• Strong hands-on Playwright and Cypress.

• Solid JavaScript or TypeScript.

• Experience running automated tests inside CI pipelines.

• A sharp eye for where things break.

• Comfortable using AI-assisted tools to speed up test authoring and widen coverage.

Bonus points for accessibility testing and regulated-environment experience.

About hedgehog lab:

We're hedgehog lab, a digital product and engineering consultancy. For nearly 20 years we've embedded engineers inside the teams of well-known organisations in regulated, high-trust sectors, from financial services to the public sector.

We're a certified B Corp.

We're also serious about AI-assisted engineering. We've built our own agentic tooling and cut time-to-merge by around 60% on recent work, and our people get to use that on real projects.

The details:

• Contract, outside IR35.

• 3 to 6 months, with strong potential to extend.

• Hybrid. You'll work from the client's London, Bristol or Edinburgh office a couple of times a week.