Vallum Associates

Role Overview We are seeking an experienced Head of Testing to lead and transform the Testing and Quality Assurance function across enterprise-scale digital transformation programs. The ideal candidate will define the testing strategy, establish governance, drive quality best practices, manage testing teams, and ensure successful delivery of business-critical applications within a complex stakeholder environment. Key Responsibilities: Testing Strategy & Leadership Define and implement the overall testing and quality assurance strategy. Build and lead high-performing testing teams across multiple programs and projects. Establish testing standards, methodologies, governance frameworks, and best practices. Drive continuous improvement initiatives within the testing function. Develop test maturity roadmaps and quality metrics. Test Planning & Delivery Oversee SIT, UAT, Regression, Performance, Security, and Automation testing activities Ensure comprehensive test planning, execution, defect management, and reporting. Manage testing activities across Agile, Waterfall, and Hybrid delivery models. Monitor testing progress and provide executive-level reporting on quality and risk. Stakeholder Management Collaborate with Business, Product, Project Management, Architecture, and Development teams. Act as the primary point of contact for quality-related governance and testing assurance. Manage relationships with third-party vendors, system integrators, and testing partners. Present testing outcomes, risks, and recommendations to senior leadership. Quality Assurance & Governance Define quality gates and release readiness criteria. Ensure compliance with organizational policies, regulatory requirements, and industry standards. Drive defect prevention initiatives and root cause analysis activities. Implement and monitor KPIs, SLAs, and quality standards. Test Automation & Innovation Promote adoption of test automation frameworks and CI/CD practices. Evaluate and implement modern testing tools and technologies. Drive shift-left, DevOps, and continuous testing practices. Explore AI-driven testing and quality engineering opportunities. Required Skills & Experience: Explicit experience in Utility Industry. 12+ years of experience in Software Testing and Quality Assurance. 5+ years in Test Management or Testing Leadership roles. Proven experience managing enterprise-wide testing programs. Strong understanding of: Test Strategy & Governance Quality Engineering Test Automation Agile Delivery DevOps Practices Risk-Based Testing Experience managing geographically distributed teams. Excellent stakeholder and vendor management skills. Strong leadership, communication, and presentation abilities. Technical Skills Test Management Tools (JIRA, Azure DevOps, HP ALM, qTest, Zephyr). Automation Frameworks (Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Tosca). CI/CD Tools (Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitHub Actions). Performance Testing Tools (LoadRunner, JMeter). Cloud Platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP). Preferred Experience within Financial Services, Utilities, Retail, Telecom, or Public Sector. Knowledge of AI-assisted testing approaches. Experience leading large-scale digital transformation programmes.

Key Responsibilities: Produce High Level Designs (HLDs) and Low Level Designs (LLDs) for identity capabilities. Define end-to-end Technical Solutions across business, application, data and infrastructure domains. Translate business, security and regulatory requirements into technical solutions. Develop reference architectures, patterns and design standards for the programme. Define integration patterns between identity platforms, applications and infrastructure. Design cloud-native solutions for GCP and Kubernetes environments. Define authentication, authorisation and federation architectures. Design Agent Identity, Human Identity and Workload Identity capabilities. Define Zero Trust security architecture and trust boundaries. Design API security, service-to-service authentication and workload authentication patterns. Develop event-driven integration architectures using messaging and asynchronous processing. Design Policy Decision Point (PDP) and Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) architectures using Policy-as-Code. Define secrets management, certificate lifecycle and PKI integration patterns. Design resilience, disaster recovery and high availability architectures. Ensure solutions meet non-functional requirements for security, scalability, resilience and performance. Produce architecture decision records (ADRs) and design documentation. Support governance through Architecture Review Boards and Design Authorities. Perform solution assurance and technical design reviews across supplier deliveries. Identify technical risks, assumptions, constraints and dependencies. Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture to ensure alignment with strategic architecture. Work with Product Owners to refine technical requirements and delivery priorities. Support engineering teams throughout implementation, testing and production readiness. Mentor engineers and promote engineering best practice. Evaluate new technologies and vendor products against programme requirements. Contribute to roadmap planning and future-state architecture. Key Skills & Experience: Enterprise Architecture Identity and Access Management (IAM) Authentication and Authorisation Zero Trust Architecture Agent Identity and Workload Identity Identity Federation (OIDC, OAuth2, SAML, SCIM) Cloud Architecture (GCP) Kubernetes and Service Mesh API Architecture and Security Event-driven Architecture Policy-as-Code (OPA/Cedar) PKI, Certificates and Secrets Management DevSecOps and CI/CD High Availability and Resilience Design Security Architecture Architecture Governance Stakeholder Management Technical Leadership

Key Skills: Broad knowledge of modern Enterprise technologies including Cloud and AI. Exposure to contemporary architectures e.g. RESTful APIs and containerised microservices. Up-to date on emerging threats and experienced with threat modelling frameworks e.g. STRIDE / MITRE ATT&CK. Significant knowledge of cyber security domains and how they apply to Enterprise business environments e.g. endpoint, network, cryptography, and IAM Certifications in security management e.g. CISSP / CISM / CCSP or equivalent. Certifications in technical security domains e.g. CEH / OSCP or equivalent Experience of Public and or Private cloud environment Awareness of industry related security standards such as ISO 27000 series, PCI DSS, COBIT, NIST, OWASP. Person Specifications: Excellent stakeholder management and client-facing skills with the ability to build strong professional relationships. Strong team player with the ability to work effectively across cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams. Strong problem-solving and conflict-resolution capabilities. High level of professionalism, integrity, and accountability in all interactions. Adaptable and resilient, with a customer-focused mindset and commitment to continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities Develop and maintain scalable applications using Python and React . Design and develop RESTful APIs using Python/FastAPI. Build responsive and reusable frontend components using React . Integrate frontend applications with backend APIs and cloud services. Develop, test, debug and deploy applications across AWS, Azure or GCP environments. Work with development teams, architects and business stakeholders to deliver technical solutions. Write clean, maintainable and well-tested code. Troubleshoot performance, integration and production issues. Follow Agile development practices and engineering standards. Use Git and CI/CD tools for source control and deployment.

Design Engineer to manage end-to-end solution design and are responsible for delivering architecture design documents in line with functional and non-functional business requirements, strategies, principles, standards, and patterns. Alongside the creation of high-level designs, Design Engineer will be required to publish new architecture patterns, key decisions, design deviations, and technical risks and issues where appropriate. Design Engineer should be comfortable presenting and sharing solutions at design authorities and senior leadership & stakeholders. Additionally, the Design Engineer will provide technical thought leadership and direction to their aligned projects and may stand in as subject matter experts and consultants related programmes. Principal Preferred Requirements Cybersecurity Expertise: Significant experience and proven technical depth within one of the following domains of cybersecurity; security operations & incident response, threat & vulnerability management, identity & access management, cryptography, infrastructure, network, application, data, cloud Broad background across information technology with the ability to communicate clearly with non-security technical SMEs at a comfortable level Excellent command of cybersecurity organisation practices, operations risk management processes, principles, architectural requirements, engineering threats and vulnerabilities, including incident response methodologies Keen understanding of national and international laws, regulations, policies and ethics related to financial industry cybersecurity Experience and understanding of both the roles and interlock between enterprise & solution architecture Experience in both operational and transformation cybersecurity roles or a clear working understanding of both perspectives Experience working in large-scale IT transformation programmes Identity & Access Management Experience working in a Hashicorp Vault environment (on-prem preferred) Experience in using Hashicorp Terraform including designing and building of complex modules In-depth real-world experience in Vault integration specifically navigating Secret Engines and Authentication methods resulting in robust and reusable patterns for consumption Ownership of root cause investigation into Vault integration problems, defining the monitoring of usage trends and creating efficiencies in the service Experience of designing or implementing Workload Identity Frameworks within large scale enterprises Capable of defining secrets management strategy and influencing the future direction of secrets management within the bank Federated Identity Management: Enabling identity sharing and single sign-on across different organisations or domains. Privileged Access Management (PAM): Securing, controlling, and monitoring access to critical systems by privileged users. Authentication Protocols: Implementing secure authentication mechanisms like Kerberos, OAuth, and SAML. Privileged Access Management (PAM): Securing, controlling, and monitoring access to critical systems by privileged users. Authentication Protocols: Implementing secure authentication mechanisms like Kerberos, OAuth, and SAML. Qualifications & Certifications: Degree or work experience directly in cybersecurity, computer science, software engineering, or related field CISSP/CISM certification or other broad cybersecurity industry-recognised certificate preferred SABSA or TOGAF certified preferred Platform & Technology: High proficiency and expertise in Jira for project & tasks management Working proficiency in Confluence for documentation and JIRA for task management Principal Accountabilities and Responsibilities Architecture & Design: Produce, manage, and update end-to-end solution designs in line with reference architecture & business requirements Articulate and publish key design decision records and options to ensure all solutions follow a logical, transparent decision-making process Articulate, publish, and ensure approval of any design deviations resulting in technical debt Ensure any technical risks or issues arising from a solution design are recorded and mitigated. Produces, manages and translates the requirements into the architecture for that solution, ensuring technology and services meet the customer needs and expected business outcomes Ensures the design of the solutions are efficient, timely and cost effective throughout the project lifecycle Clear understanding of both the motivations of the business and technical security Promote strong documentation and clerkship Governance: Ensures all high-level designs, architecture patterns, decision records, deviation requests, and technical risks or issue records undergo architectural and project governance processes Ensure all architecture artefacts undergo appropriate peer review prior to design authority presentation Present publications at technical design authorities for input, feedback, and approval