Contract - Test Manager

At Honda we embrace inclusion in our various policies, so whilst our contracts state that the hours are as required to fulfil the role with a minimum of 35 hours per week, we offer flexibility for when you work.  The regular office hours are 08:00 – 16:00 Monday to Thursday with a half hour lunch break & 08:00 – 13:00 on a Friday.  However, we offer flexibility of when you work with our daily flex-time start of between 07:00 and 11:00 providing that there is no business requirement.

Whilst there is no contractual right to work from home, the flexibility we offer is that you can request to work from home 2 days per week, again providing there is no business requirement to attend the office.

Role:
The Test Manager is responsible for defining and driving the overall test strategy, ensuring high-quality delivery of connected car services and associated software. This role provides leadership and oversight across all test activities, from planning through execution to sign-off, with accountability for ensuring that solutions are robust, reliable, and fit for purpose. 

The Test Manager will be hands-on, working at the critical intersection of software quality, system integration, and architectural integrity.
The Test Manager will engage with multiple stakeholders, manage risks, produce clear and comprehensive documentation, and act as a trusted advisor on all matters related to testing and quality assurance.

Main Responsibilities:

• Define, document, and own the test strategy, approach, and governance framework across projects and releases, 
• Develop and maintain detailed test plans, schedules, and resourcing models, ensuring alignment with overall delivery and release objectives. 
• Establish and enforce testing standards, frameworks, methodologies, and tools, including test automation where appropriate. 
• Manage all phases of testing (unit, integration, system, UAT, performance, security, regression, etc.) across multiple domains. 
• Ensure clear entry/exit criteria are agreed and adhered to for all test phases; provide go/no-go recommendations based on results and risk. 
• Lead risk-based testing, identifying, managing, and mitigating quality risks throughout the lifecycle. 
• Collaborate closely with development teams, architects, business analysts, product owners, release managers, and other stakeholders to ensure testing is integrated into the delivery pipeline. 
• Validate integration architecture across multiple systems, including APIs, microservices, and third-party platforms, ensuring testability is built into system design
• Assess and challenge architectural decisions that may compromise system stability, resilience, or long-term maintainability, acting as a technical authority who can push back on poor design choices.
• Design and execute resilience testing to ensure primary systems maintain functionality when ancillary systems fail or experience degradation, including verification of failover mechanisms, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation patterns
• Analyse functional and non-functional requirements for completeness, testability, and alignment with system goals, identifying and articulating gaps in requirements including performance, scalability, reliability, and usability considerations
• Challenge ambiguous or incomplete specifications before development begins and ensure traceability between requirements, test cases, and defects.
• Integrate security testing throughout the quality lifecycle, ensuring all internal and external system components adhere to security best practices and standards including OWASP Top 10.
• Coordinate with security teams and external penetration testing providers, clearly communicating system architecture, potential vulnerabilities, and security test plans.
• Validate authentication, authorization, data encryption, and secure communication protocols across all integration points
• Provide high-quality test documentation, including strategies, plans, test cases, results, and closure reports, tailored for both technical and senior business audiences. 
• Manage defect lifecycle, prioritization, and resolution, ensuring issues are tracked and closed effectively. 
• Oversee test environment requirements, readiness, and availability, coordinating with infrastructure and operations teams. 
• Drive continuous improvement in testing practices, tools, automation coverage, and reporting. 
• Act as a single point of accountability for test delivery within the programme, ensuring alignment to release and business outcomes. 
• Serve as the guardian of system stability, ensuring software systems and integrations are production-ready before hardware and vehicle-level testing begins  
• Mentor and guide test teams and promote a culture of quality across the organisation.

KPI’s

• Test coverage metrics (requirements coverage, functional/non-functional coverage). 
• Defect detection rate, defect leakage into production, and defect turnaround time. 
• Automation coverage and efficiency improvements. 
• Test execution progress against plan and timely reporting. 
• Quality of test documentation and stakeholder feedback. 
• Reduction in production incidents caused by insufficient testing. 
• Environment availability and utilization for test activities. 
• Adherence to release and test schedules.
• Minimal defect leakage to hardware/vehicle testing phases.
• Timely identification of architectural risks and requirement gaps.
• Successful security audit outcomes with no critical vulnerabilities in production

Qualifications, skills and experience required:
Required

• Proven experience as a Test Manager in complex software development environments, ideally within connected car services or related domains. 
• Strong understanding of software development lifecycles (Agile and Waterfall) and integration into test management practices. 
• Demonstrable experience in defining and implementing test strategies, frameworks, and governance. 
• Understanding of API technologies and integration patterns (synchronous, asynchronous, event-driven) with hands-on experience testing distributed systems and microservices architectures.
• Knowledge of resilience patterns with ability to design and execute resilience testing scenarios.
• Working knowledge of OWASP standards, common security vulnerabilities, and experience conducting or coordinating security testing including SAST, DAST, and penetration testing.
• Understanding of authentication and authorization frameworks (OAuth, JWT, SAML) and familiarity with secure coding practices and threat modelling
• Ability to produce clear, concise, and high-quality test documentation for both technical and business stakeholders. 
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to manage and motivate teams, vendors, and stakeholders in a matrixed environment. 
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, able to explain technical issues to non-technical audiences. 
• Confidence to challenge decisions and advocate for quality without being adversarial, with proven ability to push back on schedule pressure when quality standards are not met.
• Proactive issue, risk, and conflict management with strong decision-making capabilities. 
• Solid understanding of IT infrastructure, application development, and systems integration. 
• Experience in test automation tools, frameworks, and practices.

Desirable

• Experience in connected vehicle ecosystems, IoT, or automotive software testing. 
• Knowledge of security, performance, and compliance testing. 
• Experience working in a fast-paced, multicultural, and multi-vendor environment. 
• Proficiency in modern test management and reporting tools. 
• Strong stakeholder management skills with experience in customer-facing roles.

Honda is committed to the principle of equal opportunity in the workplace for all employees, temporary workers, contractors, applicants and visitors. Honda also encourages respect for the individual differences and talents of others while making full use of one's own abilities, based on Honda's philosophy of respect for the individual.

At Honda, we value and celebrate diversity and are committed to being a fair, non-discriminatory company that promotes and welcomes the uniqueness and differences of people around the world. We recognise that a diverse workforce allows for different ideas and perspectives, and we encourage everyone to share them. We strive to foster a culture of belonging that is consistent with Honda's core values and lived out in the way we work and respect each other. For us at Honda, diversifying our workforce means increasing its overall strength by providing people with equal opportunities - regardless of personal characteristics or previous careers.

This commitment flows directly from the Honda philosophy and the belief that we are all working towards a common goal. Honda recruits, hires, trains and promotes the most qualified/experienced individuals at all levels without regard to race, origin, religion or belief, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or any other protected characteristic.