Senior Automation Engineer (Contractor - Outside IR35)

Senior Automation Engineer (Contractor - Outside IR35)

Accelerate our path to continuous deployment by consolidating our test suites and delivering a robust, AI-powered Playwright framework.

$100M+ funded. Global footprint. AI-powered. Human-driven. 🚀

INSHUR is the embedded insurance powerhouse for the on-demand world. We partner with giants like Uber and Amazon to provide fair, data-backed coverage for the modern workforce. We’re 200 people strong across the UK, US, and Netherlands, using AI as a multiplier to stay ahead of the curve. Want to collaborate where tech actually meets the road? You’re in the right place.

The Project & Engagement

We are seeking an independent Senior Automation Engineering Contractor (operating through a Limited Company/PSC) for a high-impact, 3-month project to help us unlock continuous deployment. In this specialised, independent consultancy capacity, you will be responsible for the consolidation of our fragmented automated testing ecosystem—collapsing five overlapping frameworks down to a uniform, outside-in Playwright suite.

You will operate with a high degree of autonomy to rapidly scale test coverage on high-value transactional flows, using generative AI tools to accelerate test migration and code execution. Your core focus will be to establish and deliver robust, architectural system capabilities that allow our services to deploy with absolute confidence.

This project is classified as outside IR35 and will be conducted on a deliverables-driven basis, offering a day rate of up to £600.

The services can be rendered 100% remotely within the UK, with no office attendance required.

Services to be Rendered & Key Deliverables

• Consolidate Test Frameworks: Collapse the current fragmented testing ecosystem (migrating Cypress, Robot Framework, Cucumber-JS, Karate, and Jest+Supertest) into a single, uniform Playwright suite built in TypeScript.

• Uplift Core Coverage: Deliver high-value, outside-in browser and API integration tests covering core transaction-path journeys (Quote, Policy, Billing, Wallet) on our deployed services.

• Establish Reusable Patterns: Document clear architectural conventions and construct reusable fixtures, page objects, and environment seeding utilities that our permanent engineering staff can easily utilise and maintain going forward.

• Scale with AI Tools: Leverage advanced generative AI assistants to analyse, refactor, and port legacy test suites to the target Playwright framework at high efficiency.

• Triage and Stabilise Flaky Tests: Analyse existing Playwright suites to resolve flaky tests, reducing the overall project flake rate below 2% to ensure our CI/CD pipeline acts as a trustworthy quality gate.

A full Statement of Works will be shared at the selection process.

Expertise & Capabilities Required for this Engagement

…these essentials are required to successfully deliver the project:

• Playwright & TypeScript Expertise: Proven experience building outside-in browser and API integration test suites using Playwright and TypeScript from scratch.

• Boundary-First Integration Mindset: A firm delivery philosophy centered around testing distributed microservices externally (via UI/API/Eventing) rather than coupling test environments to internal source code languages.

• High-Stakes Environment Experience: A strong background delivering testing solutions in scaled or highly regulated environments (such as fintech, insurtech, or scaled scale-ups) where production regressions carry real financial impact.

• AI-Native Workflow Comfort: Complete proficiency utilising generative AI tools like Claude Code for code generation, reserving human focus for requirements gathering, discovery, and translating business logic.

• Distributed Systems Architecture Knowledge: A strong understanding of microservices, including configuring mock services (e.g., WireMock), testing using events, and managing complex third-party API dependencies.

Nice to have

• Legacy Framework Decommissioning: Experience successfully transitioning legacy testing frameworks (such as Cucumber-JS, Cypress, Robot Framework, or Karate) over to Playwright.

• JVM and Go Code Literacy: The ability to read Java, Kotlin, or Go to parse existing step definitions, Gherkin features, or codebase logic during the initial system audit.

• Modern Datastore & Event Exposure: Familiarity with MongoDB and asynchronous event-driven architectures (like GCP Pub/Sub) to aid in test data seeding and message verification.

Selection Process

We design our contractor selection process to be fast, clear, and focused entirely on architectural competency.

• Commercial & Scope Alignment: A 30-minute call with Chris Yea. We will cover the scope of the 3-month deliverables, your business background, and your experience working with AI-driven testing tools.

• Technical Interview: A streamlined 60-minute technical and collaborative conversation with a Senior Engineering Manager and QA. We'll discuss architectural requirements for automating integration tests in a distributed system

#LI-CY1 #LI-Remote