Test Planning Lead

Role Title: Test Planning Lead — Mainframe Product Migration Programme
Duration: 6 month initial contract
Location: Remote
Rate: up to £620.08 p/d Umbrella inside IR35
Role purpose / summary
Own and drive the end-to-end test planning for a mainframe product migration programme, ensuring a robust, risk-based, and audit-ready test approach across all test phases and stakeholders (delivery teams, vendors, operations, and business).
Key responsibilities
Define and maintain the overall test strategy and master test plan (phases, entry/exit criteria, environments, data, tooling, defect management, reporting).
Build and manage an integrated test schedule aligned to programme milestones, cutover, and release plans.
Lead risk-based test planning (scope, prioritisation, coverage, non-functional testing) with clear traceability to requirements and migration risks.
Coordinate test phases: SIT, System/Integration, Regression, UAT support, Performance/Volume, Resilience/DR, Security (as applicable), Dress rehearsals / cutover testing.
Define and govern test data approach (masked production-like data, synthetic data, data refresh cycles, reconciliation needs).
Plan and coordinate environment readiness (mainframe regions/LPARs, middleware, interfaces, batch windows, stubs/simulators).
Establish defect triage cadence, severity model, and quality gates; ensure timely resolution and retest.
Produce clear test reporting (progress, coverage, defects, risks/issues, go/no-go recommendations).
Drive stakeholder alignment across dev, infrastructure, ops, business SMEs, and third parties; chair test planning and readiness forums.
Ensure evidence and controls are in place for audit/compliance (test artefacts, approvals, sign-offs).
Support migration assurance: parallel runs (if used), reconciliation testing, batch/control totals, and post-migration verification.
Deliverables
Product Test Strategy & Master Test Plan
Integrated test schedule and resourcing plan
Test governance pack (RAID, RACI, comms cadence, quality gates)
Environment & test data readiness plan
Phase-level test plans (SIT/UAT/NFR/cutover rehearsals)
Test execution dashboards and go/no-go criteria
Test closure report and evidence catalogue
Required experience
Proven test planning leadership on mainframe migrations (e.g., z/OS, COBOL, CICS, DB2, IMS, MQ, batch/JCL) and complex interface landscapes.
Strong understanding of batch cycles, end-of-day processing, data migration/reconciliation, and operational constraints.
Track record creating risk-based test approaches and running test governance at programme scale.
Comfortable working with multiple delivery teams and vendors; excellent stakeholder management.
Tools / methods (describe as “experience with”)
Test management: JIRA and zephyr
Defect management and reporting: JIRA/ServiceNow/Confluence/Excel
Familiarity with automation frameworks is a plus (not mandatory), and with performance tooling where relevant. (LRE, TDM and SV)
Key skills & behaviours
Structured planner, pragmatic and delivery-focused; strong dependency management
Clear written communication and executive-level reporting
Confident facilitator in forums; calm under pressure during dress rehearsals/cutover
All profiles will be reviewed against the required skills and experience. Due to the high number of applications we will only be able to respond to successful applicants in the first instance. We thank you for your interest and the time taken to apply!

Work arrangement
No