Why Redian, and why this shape of team
You've landed here because you need QA engineers for a team based in or serving London, UK, and you're weighing whether to hire locally, use a marketplace, or engage a delivery partner. This page explains how Redian Software delivers exactly that engagement — onsite, QA engineers, aligned to London business hours (GMT / BST), on a commercial model that scales from a single engineer to a full offshore cell.
QA & Test Automation Engineers — what our engineers actually do
Redian's QA practice runs the full spectrum — from the manual exploratory testing that catches the ugly UX bugs no automation ever finds, through to end-to-end test automation in Playwright, Cypress or Selenium, API testing in Postman / Karate / REST-assured, load and performance testing in k6 or JMeter, and the CI wiring that gates every deploy on the whole suite. We ship SDETs (test-owning engineers who write both product and test code) as well as classical QA analysts, depending on what your team actually needs.
Seniority mix: QA analysts (2–4 yrs, execute test plans, log defects, run regression), senior QA / SDETs (4–8 yrs, own test automation frameworks, CI integration, performance testing), and QA leads (8+ yrs, own the quality strategy, release-readiness signoff, and the conversation with product about what "done" means for each feature). Engagements range from a single embedded SDET to a full offshore QA cell of 4–8 people covering a multi-product portfolio.
The London context
London is a demanding tech market — high salary floors, an IR35-flavoured contractor scene that makes flexible ramping expensive, and buyers whose procurement rigour (DPA, ICO alignment, DPIAs, SOC 2 questionnaires, penetration-test evidence) is a filter, not an afterthought. Whether you're a fintech scale-up in Shoreditch, a City-based bank digital-transformation team, a public-sector supplier navigating the G-Cloud framework, or an insurance broker running a legacy CRM migration, the bar is: senior engineers, defensible security posture, and delivery that lands without escalation.
Redian ships into the UK market with UK-timezone overlap — our India delivery bench opens the working day at UK 07:30 GMT and stays live until UK 12:30 GMT, which is the entire London morning. Standups, code review, incident response and demos happen inside that overlap; anything after your lunch is asynchronous, with a written handover you can read the next morning. We staff engineers who have delivered under UK data-protection expectations and are comfortable with your procurement team.
Onsite engagement — the mechanics
Onsite engagement — engineers work from your office. For clients whose delivery model needs on-the-ground presence — regulator-mandated data controls, hands-on hardware, in-room collaboration with an internal team, or simply a leadership preference — Redian deploys engineers to your location on a per-diem or medium-term contract. We handle visa, work-permit, accommodation and travel logistics from our side; you provide the desk, badging, and access to the systems the engineer will touch.
How the commercials work. Onsite carries a different rate card than remote — day-rate is higher to cover the engineer's living cost and per-diem, and minimum engagement length is usually 3 months to make the mobilisation worthwhile for both sides. We can also blend the models: a small onsite core (2–3 engineers) plus a larger remote build team, so you get the trust of physical presence without the cost of an all-onsite ramp.
Commercials and how to start
Rates depend on the exact seniority mix and length of engagement, but as a rule: a onsite QA engineer from Redian lands well below the loaded cost of the equivalent local hire in London, without dropping seniority. Minimum engagement is one month for remote, three months for onsite. Rate card, sample CVs of currently-available engineers, and reference clients in your industry — happy to send those on the first call, subject to NDA.
How the first two weeks look: we scope the roles, seniority mix and start date on a 30-minute discovery call. We share 3–5 CVs matched to the brief within 3 business days. You interview shortlist candidates directly. The chosen engineer(s) start inside 1–2 weeks (3–6 weeks if onsite mobilisation is needed), on your tools, in your workflow, with named Redian consultant oversight.
No lock-in, no minimum quarter. If an engineer isn't a fit inside the first two weeks, we swap them, no charge. If you need to scale up or down mid-engagement, we do it — that flexibility is the whole point of engaging a partner instead of hiring FTEs.