Senior Software Quality Coach

Senior Software Quality Coach
£63,000 pro-rata plus great benefits (Work Level 5)
Fixed-term contract/secondment until April 2026
Part-time (15 to 25 hours per week)
Manchester City Centre (Remote)

Please Note: This is a UK remote-first role. Those living close to Manchester will also have the option to work in the office if desired.

We’re looking for a Senior Software Quality Coach to join us at Co-op to cover a career break. You’ll join a community of Quality Coaches, Software and Platform Engineers who work collaboratively in multi-disciplinary, agile teams. These teams build the products, services, and platforms that have a huge impact on the communities we live in; helping us to build more value for our member-owners every day.

In this role, you’ll to join our Unified Commerce Platform (UCP) team to help build, maintain, and support Co-op applications and systems – using technologies such as GraphQL, Terraform, and CosmosDB. Our UCP platform provides access to Co-op’s food product catalogue, and the team provide convenient APIs for managing the end-to-end lifecycle of shopping baskets through real-time events and integrations with our partners. You’ll make sure the different teams you support have appropriate, clear and honest feedback about the quality and viability of the services being delivered. You’ll also work closely alongside more Junior Quality Coaches, providing support and guidance to help them learn and develop.

Although in-depth knowledge of testing techniques is important, this isn’t a traditional “testing” role. The focus is on enabling others to build-in quality before any code is written, rather than find any problems afterwards. If you’re someone who’s excited about fulfilling user needs and enjoy working in a highly collaborative environment, we can offer you the opportunity to grow your career and learn from industry experts in a business that’s using digital to make a difference.

What you’ll do

• Coach Software Engineers on techniques for building in quality, and apply the appropriate testing methods to make sure this quality is maintained
• Work across teams to understand requirements, define the acceptance criteria, and guide the creation of tests
• Work in an agile way, supporting incremental delivery, rapid iteration, and continuous feedback gathering
• Support colleagues across multiple teams with questions on what, when, and how to perform tests
• Carry-out exploratory and non-functional testing during the implementation cycle

This role would suit people who have

• Knowledge and experience of coaching techniques within a technical environment
• Experience with using agile practices (e.g. Kanban, XP, Scrum, Continuous Delivery)
• Experience in regression testing and advising conversion of acceptance criteria into workable tests
• A proven track record of successful exploratory testing
• A highly collaborative approach and the ability to work successfully within multi-disciplinary teams

We know that some candidates are less likely to apply for a role if they don’t meet all the criteria in the job description. At Co-op, we're committed to building a diverse and inclusive working environment, so if you'd like to apply for this role but your experience doesn't quite meet every point, we'd still encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for the job or other roles we have available.

Why Co-op?

If you’ve got the skills and experience we’re looking for, we can offer you a competitive salary and great benefits package which includes 30% off Co-op branded products in our food stores (as well as other discounts on Co-op products and services). You’ll also get:

• Private healthcare
• An annual bonus (based on personal and business performance)
• 28 days holiday plus bank holidays
• A pension with up to 10% employer contributions
• Access to a subsidised onsite gym (at our Manchester HQ)
• Coaching and training to support your career development
• Wagestream – a money management app that gives you access to a percentage of your pay as you earn it
• Grocery Aid – 24/7 access to a range of emotional, financial, and practical support services for you and your family

Building an inclusive work environment

At Co-op, we’re proud to do things a different way. As one of the world’s largest co-operatives, owned by millions of members, community is at the heart of what we do. Since our Co-op was founded in 1844, we’ve had a clear social purpose, and everything we do as a business helps to build a fairer world for our members, customers, colleagues, and communities.

We’re actively building diverse teams and we welcome applications from everyone. If you have a disability, we can make reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process according to your needs. We're also part of the Disability Confident scheme, meaning we'll always offer an interview to disabled candidates who apply through the scheme if they meet the minimum criteria for a job.

We'll ask whether you’d like to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme when you apply.

If we invite you to take part in the recruitment process for any of our jobs, we’ll ask you if you need any reasonable adjustments to enable you to participate.

You can find out more about our recruitment process at jobs.coop.co.uk/apply-process.

You can find out more about the Disability Confident scheme at Disability Confident Scheme - Co-op Colleagues and more about our commitments to diversity and inclusion here