DevOps Test Automation Engineer (SDET) (SC or DV Cleared)

DevOps Test Automation Engineer / SDET (SC or DV Cleared)

Location: Predominantly Remote (with UK-based secure government program alignment)

Day Rate: £500 – £600 per day

Contract Length: Contract

Industry: Government / Public Sector & Cloud Engineering

Disciplines: DevOps / Quality Assurance Testing / Software Engineering

About Us

We are Bridge Staffing Agency, a dedicated recruitment partner committed to connecting exceptional talent with organizations where they can make a lasting impact. We take pride in building collaborative relationships and tailoring our search solutions to your professional goals, your pace, and your people.

The Opportunity

We are supporting a secure central government programme looking for an experienced DevOps Test Automation Engineer / SDET to join a highly technical, cloud-native engineering team.

This is not a conventional manual or functional testing role. We need a technically hands-on engineer who can bridge test automation, quality engineering, and DevOps—someone comfortable writing Python code, working inside CI/CD pipelines, validating AWS infrastructure deployments, and testing APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement automated quality controls throughout the software development lifecycle.

• Develop Python-based automation frameworks for API, integration, contract, service, and web testing.

• Embed automated tests, smoke checks, and quality gates directly into CI/CD pipelines.

• Test AWS-hosted applications, cloud-native services, and infrastructure modifications.

• Validate Terraform deployments, environment configurations, and operational readiness.

• Test microservices, messaging platforms, and event-driven architectures (including Kafka or AWS services).

• Diagnose failures seamlessly across application code, pipelines, infrastructure, and logs.

What We’re Looking For

• Active UKSV SC or DV Clearance (Mandatory).

• A current and verifiable AWS Certification.

• Strong hands-on experience within AWS engineering environments and Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform.

• Proven commercial experience as an SDET, DevOps Test Engineer, or Cloud-Focused Quality Engineer.

• Strong Python development and test automation background.

• Experience with CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes/EKS).

• Background delivering within secure, regulated, or public sector environments.