are the Docker images built with a Gradle task? What you could try is to add the Docker image hash as an input to the test task, so Gradle will re-run the task if the image hash changes. Something like

tasks.test.configure {
  val imageName = "my-image"
  inputs.property("dockerImageHash",
    providers.exec {
      executable("docker")
      args(parseSpaceSeparatedArgs("inspect --format='{{index .RepoDigests 0}}' $imageName"))
    }.standardOutput.asText)
  }
}

unless the version number isn’t used in the code, in which case, it could be removed so that the builds are reproducible?

another option is to create a custom Configuration in your e2e subproject, that’s independent of the standard Java Configurations

val intTestUpToDateCheck by configurations.creating {
  isCanBeConsumed = false
  isCanBeResolved = true
}

dependencies {
  intTestUpToDateCheck(project(":my-service"))
}

tasks.test.configure {
  inputs.files(intTestUpToDateCheck)
}

(writing by hand - the syntax might need some work) that way if

my-service

changes then the task will re-run, but because the dependency isn’t used for anything else the files won’t be visible in the source code

The version is used in various places for logging and metrics etc