Operational Acceptance Test (OAT) Lead - Utilities

Looking for a role with plenty of growth opportunities?

Join one of the world's leading IT services, consulting, and business solutions organization. Backed by decades of experience, the company consistently ranks among the top global IT service providers. With an international presence across multiple countries, the company has built a reputation for delivering high-quality technology services across industries including banking, healthcare, telecommunications, and retail.

The leading consultancy partnered with a utilities provider, seeking an experienced Operational Acceptance Test (OAT) Lead to join a large-scale transformation programme. This is an excellent opportunity for a senior testing professional to drive operational readiness and ensure business-critical systems are prepared for successful production deployment. 

This role will focus on validating operational processes, service readiness, non-functional assurance, and production stability across a complex enterprise ecosystem. Don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity and apply today!

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and own the end-to-end Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT) strategy
• Develop OAT plans, scope, timelines, entry/exit criteria, and governance framework
• Validate operational readiness across business processes, support models, monitoring, and system integrations
• Ensure production readiness for batch jobs, scheduling, logging, alerting, and business continuity
• Lead non-functional testing including stability, resilience, backup, recovery, and disaster recovery
• Coordinate production-like environment setup and test data readiness
• Manage OAT defects, risks, and issue resolution with cross-functional teams
• Validate support readiness across L1/L2/L3 teams including runbooks and SOPs
• Support Go-Live decision-making through readiness reporting and KPI tracking

Required Skills & Experience:

• 10+ years in Testing, Quality Engineering, or Service Readiness
• Strong hands-on experience in Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT)
• Experience delivering within large-scale transformation programmes
• Strong knowledge of integration testing, batch processing, and enterprise operational workflows
• Familiarity with ITIL processes (Incident, Problem, Change Management)
• Experience with JIRA and/or Azure DevOps
• Strong stakeholder management and vendor coordination skills
• Proven ability to manage risks, dependencies, and operational readiness

Work Model:

• Hybrid in Reading
• 6 months contract
• Inside IR35

Salary:

• Competitive salary based on experience and qualifications