About Martin
A certified Lead Quality Engineer with over 12 years' commercial experience designing, implementing, and maintaining both UI and API based automation frameworks from scratch for large scale greenfield projects. A code-focused technical tester, with extensive experience in the usage of Playwright, Cypress, and Selenium WebDriver to build automated tests within Node.js / Java / .NET environments.
Passionate about the usage of AI in testing and automation, I regularly leverage AI Agents (GPT, Claude, Gemini) and MCP with GitHub Copilot to enhance and speed up the process of generating tests and training others to work with AI to maximise their test coverage.
Strong level of experience training, managing, and mentoring junior level testers new to coding and applying automation to testing processes.
Latest LinkedIn Posts
Check out my latest post on LinkedIn about some advanced Playwright techniques I've recently been working on
View on LinkedInCore Skills
Programming Languages
Testing Tools/Libraries
CI/Source Control/Code Quality
Web Technologies
AI Tools and Agentic Models
Notable Career Projects
Retail Annuities - Agile Release Train (RA-ART)(2025)
Description: A modernisation project with a scope to upgrade several core applications used by a large financial company for driving their annuities business. Applications were a mix of Angular based front ends and REST based endpoints.
Role: Acting as a Lead Quality Engineer overseeing a large team of engineers tasked with developing an automation framework from scratch supporting multiple applications and service layers. Introduced MCP and Agent usage to speed up creation of tests and encourage AI utilisation where appropriate.
My Scheme Updates (MySU) (2024)
Description: Angular based site designed to allow pension fund managers to administrate schemes and contributions data.
Role: I successfully rewrote a fledgling framework from the ground up using Playwright. This turned around the quality of the product and ensured testing was mostly fully automated. It changed the culture around testing within the team, fostering a greater appreciation for quality and encouraging more developers to take ownership of testing.
Data Productivity Cloud (DPC) (2022-2023)
Description: A SaaS based ETL solution built in a React frontend.
Role: I acted as the Senior SDET and built a testing framework from scratch covering all functional areas of the site using Cypress. This included visual testing, accessibility testing, and mocking capabilities. I also designed and implemented a load testing framework using K6 and integrated it into a CI pipeline.
Manage Your Account (MYA) (2018-2021)
Description: A customer facing Angular based web application for managing pension accounts and contributions.
Role: I designed and implemented a comprehensive testing strategy that included unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. This included automated penetration testing with OWASP ZAP and load testing using JMeter.
Personal Web Development Projects
Life with MND (2025)
A personal website I designed and developed for my sister, who was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 2022. The site provides a platform for her to share her poetry covering the daily challenges and experiences of living with MND.
Technologies: Next.js, Tailwind CSS, React, TypeScript, Node.js
Features: Clean, accessible design focused on readability, mobile-responsive layout, and easy content management for sharing poetry and personal reflections.
Work Experience
Lead Quality Engineer
- Overseeing multiple project workstreams and architecting test automation strategies / approaches.
- Extensively using Playwright to further enhance and modernise existing UI and API based test automation frameworks.
- Implementing CI integration and applying optimised workflows using GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps for multiple projects.
- Incorporating Applitools integration for automated visual regression testing for department wide usage across several large UI based projects.
- Introducing a Playwright based API testing framework for regression testing activities which exposed multiple defects with GraphQL endpoints. Also used as a basis for a load test framework.
- Running regular training sessions and taking part in a 2024 testing conference where I ran a well-received session on Playwright usage.
- Leveraging AI Agents (GPT, Claude, Gemini) and MCP with GitHub Copilot to enhance and speed up the process of generating tests. Training others to work with AI to maximise their test coverage.
- Acting as a lead on a highly complex regulatory project overseeing the work of a team of graduates to ensure best practices adhered to within a large Playwright based framework.
Senior Quality Engineer / SDET
- Worked as part of a front-end team to deliver a cutting-edge SaaS based ETL application called the Data Productivity Cloud – a first in the industry.
- Development and testing of React based websites and component libraries using tools such as Cypress, Percy, and Jest.
- Built and maintained a framework for load testing APIs using K6 as part of an integrated pipeline in CircleCI.
- Became a member of the Cy.pronauts programme, where Cypress experts from around the world were invited to join a closed community to gain access to Beta features and share feedback by the Cypress team.
- Devised solutions for testing Launch Darkly Feature Flags using Cypress and performing automated regression testing after regular deployments to multiple environments.
- Creation and maintenance of an NPM package for company-wide consumption of re-usable Cypress commands/functions across multiple front-end teams.
- Development of a bespoke framework utilising Cypress Component Testing and the Axe-core testing engine to check for accessibility violations against React based components used as part of multiple micro frontends (ensured a WCAG 2.1 AA standard).
- Setting up DAST scanning using Stackhawk and Cypress for comprehensive automated security testing within a CircleCI pipeline.
- Created an optimal approach for automated visual testing using Percy in conjunction with Cypress. This significantly reduced the need for many functional tests and dropped execution times in CI to minimal levels.
- Training fellow developers and testers in the usage of Cypress and building effective, robust integration tests via video conferencing sessions, face to face mentoring, and creation of Wiki/Confluence pages.
- Setting up CI pipelines (CircleCI, Bitbucket) and synthetic tests in Datadog for efficient 'shift left' and ‘shift right’ deployment and testing practices.
Senior Test Automation Engineer / SDET
- Senior Automation Engineer embedded within scrum teams delivering Angular based web applications and associated REST and GraphQL backend microservices using tools such as Protractor, JMeter, and Cucumber in TypeScript / Node.js.
- Introduced Applitools to testing frameworks for driving automated visual testing. This saved countless hours of execution time and minimised the need for more conventional functional tests.
- Wrote a Java based BDD framework utilising dependency injection for automated testing of GraphQL APIs using Rest Assured, Maven, JUnit, Cucumber.
- Developed and ran load tests for regularly checking various endpoints to ensure they remained performant under stress (JMeter, JUnit, Java, Maven).
- Performed regular penetration testing with Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) tools such as ZAP to test for vulnerabilities to common attack vectors and built a bespoke framework to use it alongside Selenium based scripts (Java, Selenium WebDriver, OWASP ZAP).
- Architecting new frameworks for department wide migration to Github/Github Actions using future proofed web automation libraries supporting the CDP (Chrome Devtools Protocol) such as Playwright and Cypress. These framework patterns were later used across multiple teams/departments within the company.
Senior Test Developer / SDET
- Pioneered a bespoke automation framework written in C# using SpecFlow, Selenium WebDriver, MSTest, and Microsoft UIAutomation for a hybrid desktop/web-based insurance application.
- Adopted DRY and SOLID programming principles to test automation code to keep codebase modular and easy to maintain. This included converting many legacy tests to use a cleaner Page Object based pattern.
- Introduced BDD to test automation practices within the company and regularly trained testers in both the UK and US to use SpecFlow to write meaningful BDD Scenario steps and code them using best industry practices.
- Helped formalise a process for signing off testing as part of a Kanban based delivery model.
Senior Automation Engineer / SDET
- Planned and developed an effective data-driven automation framework using HP QuickTest Professional (QTP/UFT), which encapsulated virtually every facet of business operations including actuarial and underwriting regression testing.
- Oversaw the work of a team of external contract automation engineers during a large-scale regulatory project, acting as a tech lead and mentor.
- Manual UAT and technical / white-box testing of regulatory and strategic software releases.
- Regularly travelled to Dublin to work closely with Agile based development teams in order to identify and resolve defects during early stages of project test cycles.
Senior Test Analyst
- Senior Test Analyst on one of the largest bank integration projects in UK history.
- Defined and executed a testing scope for data migration activities and oversaw defect resolution with offshore IT teams.
- Prepared metric / MI packs and progress reports for stakeholders.
- Identified business requirements to form a test basis, created and executed functional UAT test cases as part of regression testing activities.
Education & Certifications
Law Degree LL.B. (HONS)
University of Sussex
October 2005 – July 2008
AIOps - Foundation Level
DevOps Institute
October 2025
ISTQB - Certified Tester Advanced Level
Test Automation Engineer (CTAL – TAE)
BCS (The Chartered Institute for IT) - September 2024
ISTQB - ISEB Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL)
BCS (The Chartered Institute for IT)
July 2011
Personal Interests
- • Programming / website development
- • Video editing
- • Writing
- • Bouldering/rock climbing
- • Yoga
- • Rambling