Reporting to the Development Lead, the Automation Engineer will have responsibility for the expansion and development of automation capability within the product development teams.

The candidate will need to be comfortable working in a busy, dynamic, fast-paced, flexible organisation and as such will need to thrive in such a situation. Within the development environment priorities will change rapidly and the candidate will be required to change projects seamlessly without prior notice.

The candidate will work with likeminded, confident, friendly and pro-active people.

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with over 60,000 colleagues and over 3,400 stores across several retail fascias in over 30 markets around the world.

JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally.

We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people-led, innovative and customer-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

Role Description

Reporting to the Development Lead, the Automation engineer will have extensive automation experience. The candidate will be responsible for streamlining the development process via automation, in particular build and test automation.

The candidate should understand the importance of driving quality into code through test automation. A significant part of the automation strategy will be to implement, improve and maintain a test automation framework across product teams.

The candidate will build a product specific test automation framework using languages such as python and shell scripting in addition to using a test tool such as Silk Test or Selenium.

The candidate may also work with wider group members on specific projects.

Automation will extend to the build processes however the candidate will seek opportunities to drive innovation and efficiencies throughout the development process.

The candidate will be expected to manage their own deliverables and work to agreed timescales whilst working collaboratively with other developers from within the team and support business analysts, test analysts and business users.

Responsibilities

Operational

• Increasing the levels of automation and tooling to help drive forward quality and efficiency
• Continually identifying areas for improvement through automation, documentation, process or working methods
• Ensuring we can deliver quickly whilst improving quality
• Implementing optimal build, test and development automation processes across our products and services
• Pushing the boundaries, questioning the status quo, ensuring what we are doing and what we are building is the very best it can be
• An overall responsibility across the planning, development and execution of automated testing activities.
• Automated test and quality expertise, including structured test techniques to establish appropriate test coverage and drive test efficiencies.
• Analysis of requirements and writing technical documentation
• Coaching and supporting other team members
• Code review and ensuring the quality of the code
• Reporting progress to the Development Lead
• Participation in Sprint Planning sessions and Daily Stand-up meetings

Experience and Knowledge

Essential

• IT professional with extensive software engineering, build and test automation experience (above 5 years)
• Strong working knowledge of automation tooling and best practice.
• Strong working knowledge of Procedural Programming (in particular Python and shell scripting)
• Experience with CI/CD tooling & practices (e.g. Jenkins, automation techniques)
• An understanding of testing methodologies
• Experience working with automated test tools. ie Silk Test, Selenium
• A familiarity with software development and security best practices
• Some understanding of different development methodologies, such as Agile and Waterfall

Preferable

• Unit test framework experience. Eg. JUnit
• V&P test experience
• Data manipulation experience. Eg. Filtering, aggregations, RegEx
• Experience of SQL. HTML, Javascript,
• COBOL and Java experience
• Experience building and consuming APIs.
• Understanding terminals. Eg TTY
• Experience working with data extracts
• Black box testing experience
• Experience of a source control system, such as Subversion (SVN)
• Experience of working in a Retail environment
• Experience of working in a high volume transactional environment

Skills and Behaviour's

Essential

• Strong analytical and detailed approach to problem solving
• Ability to question and have a desire to improve processes
• Keen interest in industry trends
• Self-motivated and able to work with minimum supervision
• Ability to perform well within a team
• Good communication and collaboration skills

Preferable

• Subversion, GIT (or similar source control)
• Ability to use Office products such as Microsoft Word and Excel
• Experience in a DevOps focused environment

We know our employees work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits:

• Free parking
• Holiday Allowance
• Pension Scheme
• Health plans – Depending on level of role
• Personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.

Due to the high volumes of applications our opportunities attract, it takes time to review them all. If you don't hear back within two weeks of you applying, please consider your application to have been unsuccessful on this occasion

Applications that meet the skills criteria will be contacted for a 1st stage meeting with the talent team. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interview with the hiring manager.

Thank you again for your time.