SUMMARY

• Accomplished results - oriented Software Engineering and Technology Leader with 15+ years of hands-on experience managing or overseeing small to large-scale information technology projects.
• Articulate communicator, bridging gaps among engineering, non-engineering, leadership and customer teams. Customer advocate with proven ability to continuously improve software processes and quality to quickly meet business needs.
• Able to develop trust with clients and stakeholders across all levels of an organization quickly. Highly customer focused with proven ability to influence complex business issues with the focus on delivering value, balancing short term tactical decisions with long term strategic thinking, and supporting the needs of a rapid-growth company.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Software Development & Quality Engineering
• Conversion of Manual test environments to Automated
• Continuous Delivery
• Continuous Integration
• Continuous release
• Agile & Waterfall methodologies
• Project Management
• Customer Experience
• Design
• Analysis
• Team building
• Mentoring
• Efficiency analysis and improvements
• Career management and Communication across multiple organizational layers.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Manager of Software Quality Engineering

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Quality owner for Confidential 's flagship locally deployed and cloud-based product, SuccessMaker
• Evaluated team dynamics, product features, scope, customers, delivery timelines, support impact, defect backlogs, feature rollouts and telemetry to start the automation creation process
• Created and implemented a strategy to effectively develop and utilize automated testing from a manual-only test environment using aggressive timelines
• Drove the Test Automation Framework design and implementation roll out plan for SuccessMaker
• Automation improvements reduced manual test coverage from 8 months to 3 days.
• Test automation reduced duration of a Regression Test Pass cycle from 4 weeks to 1 week and then to near continuous integration and release within 2 days for dot releases
• Helped define, research and establish a QA solution for Test Case Management solution across the Enterprise. This helped team with predictability and accurate test planning
• Established test staging environments for software deployment and testing prior to production
• Helped define and establish future product system requirements for customers with partner teams
• Influenced requirements and release timelines as needed to ensure better quality and customer satisfaction
• Defined and maintained key measurements and metrics (KPI's) to quantify and benchmark QA effectiveness, adjusting processes as needed for continuous improvement.
• Provided performance testing metrics processes including trend reporting and execution status to senior management to provide an analytical approach to software release risk analysis and decision making
• First team to include and in corporate mobile device testing using automation testing in Sauce Labs. Evaluated and identified test gaps, introduced test efficiencies in limited manual and broad automated test coverage on diversified mobile, desktop hardware and software configurations running multiple browser combinations using Sauce Labs
• Established and reviewed testing standards and best practices for establishing a continuous improvement program
• Managed onshore (FTE/Contract) including offshore contracting resources for 24x7 coverage
• Close engagement with key stakeholder teams (Curriculum, Content, Editorial, Art, Gadgets and other technology and partner influencers
• Partnered with Product Management, Project Management, Customer Engineering and Development teams helping ship three simultaneous product releases using scrum and agile development methodologies
• Release dates once established were closely coordinated with Development, QA and IT. Played a key role in defining the release checklist. Cloud deployments were done to AWS staging servers and then validated. Code was subsequently moved to production environments with final testing conducted and signed off by QA with the executive chain and stakeholders notified during every step leading to signoff
• Test passes performed against locally deployed and AWS cloud-based environments
• Performed QA scoping, budgeting, resourcing and planning for domestic and international product releases
• Improvements added iteratively to test documentation, resource allocation and test execution.
• Extremely resourceful in budget spend for the team
• Mentoring of SQE Leads and IC's, career management and guidance, Interview and hire qualified candidates for Confidential Learning Services Engineering Division.
• Identified bottlenecks and pain points. Directed resources to address challenges in a directed, methodical, cost-effective, and data-driven manner; leveraged analytical experience to build a road map to meet the needs of the stakeholders.
• Weekly status/progress updates including KPI's to Sr. VP, VP's, Directors and other executive management
• Organization and execution of corporate-wide software innovation projects
• QA Automation technologies: Selenium UI, Java, Javascript, XML and SQL

QA Tools: Zephyr (TCM), JIRA, HipChat, Rally, WebEx, Google Suite of Products, MS Office Suite

Principal Group Quality Manager

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for overall development and strategic direction of the SQE function (Qualitative and Quantitative measures) for Licensing and Deployment in Windows.
• Worked closely with global cross-functional teams (Product Management, MSIT, Marketing, Customer Support, Service Management/Operations & OEM) to provide feedback, strategy, project status and direction
• Established team's goals for Software Quality Engineering. Achieving a high-quality bar was achieved through the conversion from manual to automated testing. Test automation was developed to support all tenets needed for shipping to customers (ex: performance, stress, internationalization, accessibility). A Test automation harness was also developed to enable the Dev team catch regressions early
• Aggressive scheduling and prioritization plan included execution towards building a portable and scalable test automation framework for ease of execution and reporting
• Created and implemented a strategy to effectively develop a high percentage of automated testing resulting in an overall automation rate of 90%, reducing test execution time by 75%
• Provided consistent testing metrics reviews and processes via KPI's including trend reporting and execution status to senior management providing an analytical approach to software release risk analysis and improved decision making
• Implemented Best Practices to ensure engineering and operational solutions were scalable using both Agile and Iterative development techniques
• Iterative regression and bug fix testing from development, testing, deployment to release
• Developed and drove career performance strategies, direction, mentoring and resource management
• Developed testing standards and best practices for establishing continuous improvement and release to production program
• Monthly dry runs of cross-team and cross-component end-to-end scenarios to ensure no regressions.
• Implemented a program where each SDET shadowed a person in sales for one week and presented their findings to the team. This drove defects or product changes in future release significantly improving customer satisfaction.
• Telemetry added to each component. Data mined post release enabled the prioritization of fixes, changes to design and functionality for future releases. A/B testing was also widely used.
• Created release plans for each owned component. Established criteria and metrics (KPI's) via centralized dashboards for each component through the testing cycle to ensure quality was on track for sign off
• Create ship-room meetings with partner teams to discuss cross-component dependent defects, negotiate fixes and prioritize product defects with input from Tech Support
• Worked effectively in the face of stress, ambiguity, difficult situations, and shifting priorities all while championing the long-term architectural view; understood the need to shift focus and priorities as required and successfully lead others through periods of change.
• Considered and implemented novel approaches to tackle new issues/challenges in an aggressive manner; encouraged the team to take advantage of self-directed learning opportunities
• Influenced senior leadership to adopt new ideas, products, and approaches that improved product quality and speed to market, reducing budget spend by 20% year-over-year
• Strong project management, and conflict management skills applied in providing support and direction to team members
• Delivered a broad set of Core Deployment Platform components helping reduce the cost of deployment to consumers, IT and OEM for Windows
• Provided team leadership across Microsoft by driving component and feature test coverage and adoption across teams via brown-bags and presentations to executive management faster than the previous release.
• Developed automated testing environments & high reliability tests using Windows Test Technologies Automation Framework for UI, API, Unit & End-to-End scenario tests exceeding 70% code coverage
• Established career development and training plans/objectives for staff to meet their career and project goals, performed monthly career reviews and provide guidance as appropriate
• Created team-bonding events, bug smashes and bug bashes every quarter
• Managed a team of external, offshore and in-house contractors and vendors
• Established a cross-team mentor program to enable cross-component knowledge transfer and training
• Frugal spend resulting 10% below prior year's budgeted spend
• Team was consistently rated the highest in team satisfaction standpoint using an anonymous data poll. Least amount of turnover compared to other teams for 5 consecutive years.