From Graduate to Principal: My Quality Engineering Journey

Starting as a graduate

I joined Dunelm in September 2018 as a Technology Graduate. I didn't know what quality engineering was. I barely knew what I wanted to do in tech. But I knew I wanted to learn, and Dunelm gave me the space to figure it out.

The graduate programme rotated me through different areas: software development, business analysis, project management, and quality engineering. Each rotation taught me something, but quality engineering clicked. I loved the mix of technical skill and critical thinking. I loved finding problems before customers did.

Becoming a Quality Engineer

A year in, I moved into a permanent Quality Engineer role. This is where the real learning started. I went from "someone who tests things" to understanding what good testing actually looks like. I learned about risk-based testing, exploratory approaches, and how to have meaningful conversations with developers about quality.

The biggest lesson from this period was that testing isn't about finding bugs. It's about providing information. The team needs to know the state of the product so they can make informed decisions. Once I understood that, everything changed.

Stepping up to Senior SDET

The jump to Senior SDET was where technical depth became critical. I needed to design frameworks, not just use them. I needed to understand CI/CD pipelines end to end. I needed to make architectural decisions about test infrastructure that would scale.

This is also where leadership started creeping in. People came to me with questions. I was mentoring without realising it. I was influencing technical decisions across multiple teams. The role taught me that seniority isn't about knowing everything. It's about knowing how to figure things out and helping others do the same.

The Principal role (and redundancy)

In January 2023, I was promoted to Principal Quality Engineer. This was a big shift from hands-on technical work to strategy, leadership, and organisational influence. I was leading quality strategies for digitising Dunelm's retail offering, line-managing engineers, and driving process improvements across multiple teams.

Then in May 2024, the role was made redundant. That's a hard thing to go through. But I learned that redundancy isn't a reflection of your worth. It's a business decision. I took what I learned about leadership, strategy, and resilience, and I moved forward.

What I'd tell my younger self

Say yes to things that scare you. The graduate programme, the first conference talk, the principal role. Every time I said yes to something uncomfortable, I grew. Don't wait until you feel ready because you never will.

Build relationships over skills. Technical skills matter, but the people around you matter more. Every opportunity I've had came through relationships, not through code I wrote.

And finally: your career isn't a straight line. Redundancy, lateral moves, going back to an IC role after being a leader. None of that is failure. It's just the path.