Test Up North 2026
Our second software testing conference on Tuesday 8th September in Leeds
A full day of learning, sharing and socialising.
The details
Date: Tuesday 8th September 2026
Time: 09:15 - 16:30 (all day)
Location: Leeds Building Society Head Office, 26 Sovereign Street, Leeds
Cost: Free
Thank you to those who joined us in Leeds on Tuesday 8th September 2026 at Test Up North 2026, a software testing conference, for a full day of learning, sharing and socialising.
You learnt about new testing technology and industry trends, heard real stories of problems and solutions from professionals, gave your views on topics as part of our group discussions, and even played some games. Plus, there was loads of time to get to know other members of the testing community.
Test Up North 2026 is a full-day event with arrival from 9:15, finishing around 16:30. There will be plenty of breaks, a buffet lunch and refreshments provided throughout the day.
Who was it for?
Although it was a testing-focused event, Test Up North 2026 was open to anyone working in or around the software development lifecycle with at least basic testing and technical knowledge.
It was a perfect event for those who wanted to build on their existing knowledge and experience of testing, who wanted to come away with practical examples and information that they could use in their role.
The sessions
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The Reluctant Quality Coach
Ash WinterQuality Engineer - Diagram Industries
In his 30-minute talk, "The Reluctant Quality Coach," Ash will explore the inherent tension between advocating for team-owned quality and his personal drive to stay hands-on with testing. Acknowledging the messy reality of transitioning from a traditional tester to a modern "quality person," he will share practical, field-tested strategies for navigating the role. Attendees will learn how to practice "proactive patience" when guiding team practices, how to maximise a Quality Coach's value during the critical forming and storming phases of team development, and how to strike the right balance between coaching others in exploratory testing while still rolling up their own sleeves.
About Ash
Ash is an experienced, community-focused tester, operating at the Principal or Staff level. He can raise the profile of testing in the organisation and coach development teams to deliver software with known quality at speed. He is a co-organiser for the Leeds Testing Atelier, a co-author of the Team Guide to Testability, a regular blogger, and a contributor to many Ministry of Testing initiatives.
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Testing Availability at Scale: When 99.99% Almost Killed Our Mobile App
Faith SodipeSoftware Engineer
What happens when your monitoring says green, your tests are passing, and your users are still experiencing failure? That's exactly the situation he found himself in, and it changed how he thinks about testing availability entirely. This talk walks through a real incident where near-perfect availability metrics masked a systemic problem that traditional testing never caught. As a mobile engineering lead responsible for backend availability, he will share how they detected the failure, what their existing test strategy missed, and the hard lessons learned about the difference between testing that a system works and testing that a system holds up. We will explore observability as a testing discipline, what meaningful availability testing actually looks like beyond uptime percentages, and how to build confidence in systems that are designed to never go down until they do.
About Faith
Faith is a UK-based software engineer, speaker, and community builder focused on software engineering, cybersecurity, AI, and inclusive technology leadership. His professional work blends product thinking with technical depth, with particular interest in resilient systems, developer experience, and practical uses of emerging technologies. Alongside his engineering work, Faith regularly contributes to public conversations through talks, webinars, panels, and media appearances. He is committed to helping people navigate technology careers with more clarity and confidence, and he actively supports communities that expand access and representation in the industry.
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Leveraging AI in a shift-left environment
Jennifer RoseQuality Analyst - Onstate
Clear, concise requirements are key to building the right product. By putting quality at the heart of development from the outset and adopting a shift-left approach, teams can reduce ambiguity and improve delivery. This workshop explores how AI can be used before development begins to support analysis and testing — without replacing the critical thinking and judgement that quality professionals bring. In the workshop, you'll also be able to practice creating your own user stories using your preferred AI tool.
About Jennifer
Jennifer Rose is a quality analyst with over 10 years' experience across several industries. She is currently advocating for quality practices at Onstate, with a strong focus on accessibility, UX and how best to use AI while retaining critical thinking. This will be her second time presenting and her first-ever workshop, but what she lacks in experience, she makes up for in enthusiasm. Outside of the office, you'll see her at community meet-ups and on track for Sheffield Steel Roller Derby. Jennifer has also been nominated for Women in Tech 100 this year.
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Testing What You Can’t Control
Adam DavisSenior Software Engineering Manager
Using his side project, Pixelmesh, Adam will turn the room into a distributed real-time display powered by the audience's devices. What starts as a simple interactive demo quickly becomes a lesson in what happens when software leaves controlled environments and collides with real-world conditions. Part engineering deep dive, part live experiment, this session is hands-on, a little chaotic, and designed to show what real-world testing actually looks like when the audience becomes part of the system.
About Adam
Adam is a Software Engineering Manager with over a decade of experience leading teams across development, QA and release. His focus has been on improving delivery speed, software quality, and release reliability, while introducing more data-driven ways of working through CI/CD, test automation, and clear delivery metrics. Outside of work, Adam spends time on side projects that let him explore new technologies and experiment with ideas he probably didn’t need to build. He sees these as a way to stay curious and bring practical learning back into how teams approach experimentation and continuous improvement.
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You Can't Test What You Don't Understand
Danielle WainwrightTest Engineer - Leeds Building Society
The domain knowledge gap: How improving domain knowledge transformed confidence, collaboration and testing quality
About Danielle
Like many of us who found a career in testing, I started with Leeds Building Society as a business user and joined a UAT team in 2019 to test a new mortgage originations platform. I enjoyed testing, and it sparked my inquisitive nature. When the project ended, I joined the LBS System Testing Team in 2021. Over the last 5 years, I’ve continued to build on my technical QE skills, expanded my area of mortgage expertise, adding C# Selenium, Rest# automation along with API testing. Outside of work, I like working out, boxing, crafting, reading (anything Greek myth!) and relaxing with my 2 black cats (Merry & Pippin).
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Who taught you to test?
Crispin ReadCEO - The Coders Guild
Most software testers learned their craft not from courses, but from mentors who taught them how to interrogate risk and break systems properly. Yet despite a quarter-century of evolution making these skills the core foundation of modern software development, entry routes into the profession are rapidly diminishing. Rather than delivering a traditional lecture, this interactive session tackles how to preserve these vital skills and open up visible pathways for the next generation—including overlooked talent already sitting within existing organisations. Attendees will leave with a clear picture of the valuable knowledge they carry worth passing on and one practical action to help protect and grow the craft.
About Crispin
Crispin started his career in tech in the olden days, before Google even existed and when people still said 'www' as the prefix for a web address. He did a couple of decades in software development, digital strategy, product, UX and accessibility, before what started as a hobby project, The Coders Guild, took over his life and he ended up running a tech training firm full-time. He's obsessed with how people learn, like how people actually learn, especially the difficult technical vocations. He busy-bodies a lot with Skills England and the DfE on what goes into apprenticeship standards, works with the UN Global Compact on social mobility, and sits on the FSB Technical Committee. He also runs Leeds Digital Drinks and storytime, a low-key monthly networking night for digital people in Leeds.
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AI: Stories from the coal face
Chris AldredPrincipal Consultant Software Engineer - Hippo
The tech industry is buzzing with warnings that people must rapidly adapt to survive the AI revolution—but what if we flipped the script? In 'AI: Stories from the coalface,' we will move past the relentless hype to explore how real teams are forcing AI to adapt to our needs, not the other way around. By sharing practical, unfiltered experiences of integrating AI into our daily testing and development workflows, this session cuts through the noise to discuss what actually works on the ground. Join the conversation, share your own team's successes and setbacks, and help us shape a new, empowering narrative where AI serves our goals.
About Chris
Chris Aldred is a Principal Consultant at Hippo Digital who has been riding, and occasionally wrestling, the AI hype wave for a decade. Initially as a Machine Learning researcher at the University of Hull, Chris has spent years pushing the boundaries of human-computer interaction, from early debates on training data ethics to today's LLM explosion. Over the last 18 months, his time at the 'coalface' has been defined by integrating AI into real engineering workflows while battling his biggest professional pet peeve: the dangerous myth that AI is about to replace human development teams. Now at Hippo, Chris uses his role to build user centred solutions that use AI that fits the problem rather than making the problem fit AI.
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Prompt Injection Is a Test Case: How to Break AI Features Before Users Do
Damilare BakareSoftware Engineer - MosaiQ Labs
This is a practical session on Safe AI testing for real product teams. As AI features become part of everyday software, testers and developers need to think beyond whether the system responds and ask whether it responds safely, reliably, and within the product’s intent. This talk explores how to test AI-powered features using examples such as prompt injection, malicious documents, messy user input, unsafe outputs, and trust failures. Attendees will leave with a practical way to identify AI risks early and design test cases that help make AI systems safer before they reach users.
About Damilare
Damilare Bakare is a Senior Software Engineer with over four years of experience building production software across web, mobile, and AI-powered products. He holds an MSc in Advanced Computer Science from the University of Hull. His work focuses on turning complex product ideas into reliable systems used by real people. He has contributed to products with experience across consumer, enterprise, and community-focused software. At MosaiQ Labs, Damilare has helped ship AI-powered meeting intelligence features used by over 10,000 monthly active users and supported enterprise deployment for commercially valuable products. Beyond engineering, he is active in the Northern tech community as an organiser of developer events and practical technology initiatives.
Venue
Our venue for 2026 was the event space at Leeds Building Society Head Office, kindly provided by LBS. This has more capacity than 2025, it was only 5 minutes from Leeds Train Station, had disabled toilets, and was accessible for those with reduced mobility. Please specify when ordering tickets if you had any specific access needs.
See location on Google Maps.Sponsors
We are grateful to our sponsors for supporting this event
Headline sponsors
Company sponsors
Personal sponsors
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Ady Stokes
