---
title: "Aftab Ahmed - Principal QE Consultant in Greater Bengaluru Area | Tal"
description: "Meet Aftab Ahmed, . based in Greater Bengaluru Area. AI stack includes claude code, cursor, and deepseek."
image: "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2/share-image"
---

# Aftab Ahmed on Tal

## Headline

\.

## 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\[

[View the original profile](https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2)

```json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "@id": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2#person",
      "name": "Aftab Ahmed",
      "url": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2",
      "image": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2/profile-photo.jpg",
      "description": "Meet Aftab Ahmed, . based in Greater Bengaluru Area. AI stack includes claude code, cursor, and deepseek.",
      "jobTitle": "Principal QE Consultant",
      "worksFor": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "name": "Aftab Ahmed"
      },
      "hasOccupation": {
        "@type": "Occupation",
        "name": "Principal QE Consultant"
      },
      "homeLocation": {
        "@type": "Place",
        "name": "Greater Bengaluru Area"
      },
      "alumniOf": [
        {
          "@type": "EducationalOrganization",
          "name": "Bapuji Institute of Engineering and Technology["
        }
      ],
      "knowsAbout": [
        "claude code",
        "cursor",
        "deepseek"
      ],
      "mainEntityOfPage": {
        "@id": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2#webpage"
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "ProfilePage",
      "@id": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2#webpage",
      "url": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2",
      "name": "Aftab Ahmed on Tal",
      "description": "Meet Aftab Ahmed, . based in Greater Bengaluru Area. AI stack includes claude code, cursor, and deepseek.",
      "dateModified": "2026-10-16T03:11:20.643Z",
      "isPartOf": {
        "@id": "https://tal.club/#website"
      },
      "mainEntity": {
        "@id": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2#person"
      },
      "primaryImageOfPage": {
        "@type": "ImageObject",
        "url": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2/profile-photo.jpg",
        "contentUrl": "https://tal.club/meet/aftab-ahmed-2/profile-photo.jpg",
        "caption": "Aftab Ahmed profile photo on Tal"
      },
      "inLanguage": "en-IN"
    }
  ]
}
```