James Goatley
12+ years in quality engineering across fintech, healthtech, banking and enterprise cloud. I own the QE technical roadmap across 10+ engineering squads at NatWest Boxed, from contract testing and capacity modelling to AI-assisted diagnostics that cut test failure investigation time by 75%.
activeStaff SDET / QE Chapter Lead · Quality Engineering
- Experience
- 12+ yrs
- Industries
- 5
Who I am
I'm a Staff SDET and Quality Engineering Chapter Lead at NatWest Boxed, ISTQB-certified, focused on improving how engineering organisations build, test and deliver software. I own the chapter's technical roadmap and work across 10+ engineering squads, and engineers and senior leaders ask for my input on architecture, including multi-region. The role goes well beyond test automation. I use pipeline health, flaky test counts and DORA metrics to see where engineering effort is being lost, then build the tooling to fix it. Recent examples are bidirectional contract testing on our existing Pact infrastructure, a Python capacity model that feeds both Gatling performance tests and business capacity planning, and E2E reliability work that raised pipeline success by 25 percentage points.
I'm interested in how AI changes the way we approach software engineering and quality. I've built reusable OpenCode skills that check implementations against our testing standards, and AI-assisted tooling that cut test failure investigation time by 75%. The skills are in a shared repository and adoption is still growing. The same instinct, adapt the approach to the problem and not the other way round, has carried across fintech, healthtech, enterprise cloud migration, banking and property tech, five industries with different regulatory pressures and engineering cultures.
Alongside my staff role, I run Digital Editions Design, building websites and web applications for small businesses, and it.passed.ci, where I share ideas on testing, SDET engineering, automation and AI-assisted quality engineering. The common thread is fairly simple: I like solving problems, removing friction and building things that make other people more effective.
Based in
London, United Kingdom
Seevic College
BTEC National Diploma, Sport and Exercise Science
2007 — 2009, Distinction x3
The FitzWimarc School
Secondary Education
Certifications
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Jun 2018
ISTQB Foundation Level (ISEB)
Oct 2012
Clearance
Security Check (SC) Cleared
Valid until Nov 2029
What I work with
Languages
Test Automation
Performance
DevOps & Cloud
Platforms & Frameworks
Leadership & Practice
Where I've worked
Ownerat Digital Editions Designactive
Essex, England, United Kingdom
Providing affordable online presence solutions for local businesses — websites, hosting, and ongoing care.
Aug 2026 — Present
Staff SDET / QE Chapter Leadat NatWest Boxedactive
Quality Engineering Chapter Lead with technical influence across 10+ engineering squads and several engineering missions. I own the chapter's technical roadmap and advise engineers, technical leads and senior leadership on testing architecture and multi-region adoption.
- Raised E2E pipeline success by 25 percentage points (measured in Datadog CI Visibility) by aligning tests with distributed-system behaviour such as eventual consistency.
- Cut test failure investigation time by 75% with AI-assisted tooling.
- Designed bidirectional API contract testing in TypeScript on our existing Pact infrastructure, avoiding extra licensing. It covers around 90% of services in my domain and 10% in other domain areas, and engineer-reported confidence in API integrations rose by 20 percentage points.
- Built a database-backed Python capacity model that generates realistic workloads for Gatling and lets senior stakeholders adjust business demand assumptions to see the capacity required.
- Created reusable OpenCode skills that check code against our testing standards and simplify contract test implementation for other domain areas. They are in a shared repository and adoption is still growing.
- Argued for performance testing the new region when senior colleagues saw no need. The case was accepted and the work is under way.
- Wrote the SDET career framework, co-developed the testing standards with other SDETs, and wrote onboarding documentation for new joiners.
Jan 2024 — Present
Software Developer in Testat NatWest Boxed
Sole embedded SDET in a five-person scrum team; built automated test solutions into CI pipelines and streamlined Jira processes for the wider operations team.
Jan 2023 — Jan 2024
Quality Engineering Managerat Babylon (eMed)
Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Led a team of SDETs across 8 cross-functional product teams, cut annual CI costs by roughly $60K through workflow optimisation, and drove adoption of automated post-deployment release testing.
May 2022 — Dec 2022
Staff Quality Engineerat Babylon (eMed)
Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Defined quality engineering strategy, testing approaches, and automation frameworks, and worked with stakeholders to resolve testing pain points across the organisation.
Nov 2021 — May 2022
Test Architectat Fujitsu
London Area, United Kingdom
Helped define a robust test strategy for a large-scale cloud migration project.
Apr 2021 — Nov 2021
Test Leadat Fujitsu
London Area, United Kingdom
Feb 2020 — Apr 2021
Senior Test Specialistat Fujitsu (Contract)
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Led QA across an account as part of a cross-functional Scrum team.
Aug 2019 — Jan 2020
Directorat James WG LTD
Aug 2018 — Sep 2020
Software Developer in Testat European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) — Contract
Technical QA Lead and SDET: built an automation framework for an Angular app using Protractor and WireMock, maintained requirement traceability with Cucumber, defined a performance testing strategy with Gatling/NeoLoad, drove code quality with SonarQube and JaCoCo, and supported Azure deployments and monitoring with Kibana.
Aug 2018 — Aug 2019
Senior Software QA Engineerat Rightmove
London Area, United Kingdom
Jun 2015 — Aug 2018
Test Analystat Cognitran
Chelmsford, England, United Kingdom
Lead tester on a major US project covering API and UI testing, plus automation scripting in Java with Selenium WebDriver, Maven, and TestNG using the page object pattern.
Oct 2014 — Jun 2015
Quality Analystat Blackthorn Technologies
Westminster, London, United Kingdom
Feb 2014 — Oct 2014
What I'm building
Digital Editions Design↗
Affordable, professional websites for local businesses
A self-employed venture building websites and web applications for local businesses with Next.js, TypeScript and managed cloud services. The work covers front-end development, data integration, deployment and ongoing care, built with the same quality mindset as a career in software testing.
Bloods by Amy
Website for a local phlebotomy business
I develop and maintain the website and digital service information for a local phlebotomy business, with a focus on clear customer journeys and practical business needs.
Let's talk
Let's work together.
Whether it's quality engineering, developer enablement, or a new website for your business, feel free to reach out.