Headline

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About

With 20 years in software quality engineering — including 13 years in test management and strategy leadership — I specialise in scaling high-performance QA functions, architecting automation frameworks, and embedding quality throughout the software delivery lifecycle. I currently run a boutique QA consulting firm, helping startups build QA practices from the ground up: defining test strategy, designing automation architecture, integrating CI/CD quality gates, and structuring QA hiring pipelines. Every engagement has come through referrals — a direct reflection of the outcomes I deliver. ─ WHAT I'M KNOWN FOR ───────────────────── ✦ Building & scaling QA teams from scratch — managed up to 30 engineers across distributed, global teams spanning India, the EU, and the US ✦ Automation framework architecture — built Mobile (Appium) and API (RestAssured) frameworks from the ground up; improved automation coverage by 30% at Fortra ✦ End-to-end test strategy — functional, performance, security, and regression testing across Agile, DevOps, and Waterfall environments ✦ Regulated platform expertise — PCI-DSS and RBI PPI compliance experience in fintech and contactless payments ✦ Executive advisory — served as primary QA advisor for Go/No-Go decisions; partnered with Mastercard and Visa on certification requirements ─ CAREER HIGHLIGHTS ────────────────────── → Head of Global QA | NXP Semiconductors Led 5 teams of 30 QA engineers across India & EU for the Secure Service 2GO Platform → Senior Quality Engineering Manager | Fortra Led a 20-member system test team for mission-critical platforms; 30% automation coverage uplift → Lead SDET | Inmobi Technologies Built mobile QA from 2 to 12 engineers; reduced testing cycle from 5 man-days to under a day ─ TECHNICAL SKILLS ─────────────────────── Selenium · Appium · RestAssured · Postman · JMeter · Java · Python · Cucumber · Robot Framework · JUnit · TestNG · Jenkins · JIRA · CI/CD · AI-driven testing tools (Cursor) ─ DOMAINS ──────────────────────────────── Fintech · Mobile Ad-Tech · Storage · Contactless Payments · SaaS · Semiconductor Open to: QA Director · Head of Quality Engineering · VP Quality · Senior Quality Engineering Manager · QA Consulting 📧 aftab.ahmed14@protonmail.com 🌐 aftab-ahmed.com

Location

Greater Bengaluru Area

AI stack

claude code

cursor

deepseek

Work experience

Principal QE Consultant at Aftab Ahmed, Jun 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 4 mos, Bengaluru, As the founder of a boutique QA services firm, I offer the following services to start-ups and early-stage startups: QA Team Hiring & Mentoring: Hire & structure QA teams, Upskill manual teams for automation Automation Framework Development: Web UI, API and Mobile automation, Test architecture design, scalable framework creation QA Strategy & Setup for Startups: QA process design from scratch, Test strategy for MVP to scale, Tooling and automation roadmap, CI/CD quality integration. All clients acquired via referrals.

Senior QA Manager at Fortra, Aug 2022 - Present · 4 yrs 2 mos, Lead, coach, and manage a high-performing System Test team of 18 members (2 QA Managers, 4 ICs) supporting mission-critical platforms.

Senior QA Manager at NXP Semiconductors, Sep 2019 - Present · 7 yrs 1 mo, ● Head of QA for NXP’s Secure Service 2GO Platform. ● Involves 4 QA teams consisting of 18 QA members and automation test leads. ● Build and enhance UI and API automation for regression and user acceptance testing. ● Working with partners like Mastercard and Visa for contactless payment. ● Developing structured test plans, test strategies and test reports. ● Proactively raise issues for the growing team before they become a problem. ● Manage headcount, hiring, onboarding. ● Drive execution of functional, component, automated regression testing in Agile environment. ● Define and monitor QA Metrics, Test Reports, Test Logs, and Quality Trends. ● Implement, gather and report team/project metrics. ● Coach engineers and align QA & testing practices across teams. ● Test Engineering point of contact for senior leadership stakeholders and cross-functional teams. ● Strong people management experience skills including hiring, developing, and retaining talent. ● Manage tests end-to-end in coordination with product teams and testing vendors.

Test Manager at Pine Labs, Oct 2016 - Sep 2019 · 3 yrs, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, ● Led a team of 11 consisting of both manual testers and automation testers. ● Preparing test plans, reviewing test cases for fortnightly and major releases. ● Coming up with Automation framework strategy. ● Define and drive test measurements and metrics and KPIs/SLAs. ● Manage blockers, obstacles, and dependencies. ● Driving automation and leveraging CICD workflows and QA automation workflows. ● Analyze complex defects/issues, provide guidance/work methodically to isolate root cause found during and after software release. ● Involved in hiring of QA team members across Qwikcilver. ● Testing according to regulatory and compliance of RBI for Gift Cards. ● End to end ownership of automation toolkit development.

Lead SDET at InMobi, Jul 2012 - Oct 2016 · 4 yrs 4 mos, Bangalore, Lead a team of Eigh people, which is responsible for QA of everything related to Rich Media. • Built the team from ground level, which involved hiring, training and scaling the team from two members to a current size of six. • Coaching and mentoring them for future roles. • Currently running an initiative to automate testing of rich media on mobile devices (iOS and Android) using Appium to reduce the testing cycle from 5 man-days to less than a day. • Driving Third Party Certification, which involves certifying third party ads on InMobi ad-network. • Interact with third parties (Celtra, Flashtalking etc.) on a weekly basis to resolve outstanding issues, to check on status, set expectations and drive towards closure of certification. • Involved in publisher certification. • Brought in testing best practices for QA.

Education

Computer Software Engineering, Bapuji Institute of Engineering and Technology[