Headline

Head of Quality & Performance Engineering | 25+ Years | Generative AI in QE | Test Automation | Vendor Management, RFPs, SLAs & Budgeting | Quality Metrics & Executive Reporting | Team Scaling & Org Design |

About

Quality Engineering executive with 20+ years scaling global QE organisations (teams of 125+) across OTT, ERP/CRM, BPM and Payments — including 5+ years at Head-of-QA level leading multi-disciplinary, multi-site teams across manual testing, automation and performance engineering. Proven record defining enterprise QE strategy, governance and KPIs, modernising automation and performance stacks, and adopting GenAI-augmented quality engineering. Experienced in data-privacy/PII compliance testing within payments, with strong commercial acumen across RFPs, vendor contracts, renewals and SLA governance. Currently leading Quality Engineering at SonyLIV, I manage a team of over 120 members across various platforms, including mobile, web, Smart TVs, and OTT. My approach? Automate early, test smart, and scale quality without scaling cost. I’m hands-on with technology, but just as focused on people and process. Whether it's building robust test frameworks, leveraging AI-driven test automation, or coaching managers to lead with clarity, I’m driven by outcomes.

Location

Greater Bengaluru Area

AI stack

antigravity

claude code

claude

gemini

kiro

Work experience

VP and Head - Quality Assurance and Performance Engineering - Technology, Digital Business at Sony Pictures Networks India, Apr 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 7 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, • Lead a 125+ member QA team for the SonyLIV OTT platform. • Own budgets, KPIs and vendor strategy; author RFPs and negotiate contracts, renewals and SLAs with legal and sourcing. Cut vendor costs ~15%. • Built a Playwright web automation framework using KIRO+Claude with self-healing locators, JIRA and Slack integration for defect logging, and combined UI, API and analytics validation. • Brought GenAI into test-case generation, accelerating authoring,automation and coverage. • Ran PII and data-privacy compliance testing across the payments flow. • Cut production bug escapes ~15% QoQ; raised internal defect detection ~20% QoQ. • Automated 70% of regression suites for cross-platform runs. • Led ~30M-user load testing for live sports, shaping API performance and scaling strategy. • Introduced Graceful Degradation / Panic testing for live events, cutting peak-load downtime 20%.

Director Software QE at Xperi Inc., Oct 2019 - Apr 2024 · 4 yrs 7 mos, Greater Bengaluru Area, • Grew the global QE team from 30 to 60+ across multiple cloud OTT products. • Cut cost of defects and quality ~50% with an “automate-first” strategy. • Reduced regression cycle time 40% via containerised parallel runs (Docker/K8s). • Held 99.95% resiliency through synthetic monitoring and load testing. • Ran RFPs, negotiations and renewals for large QA vendors, enforcing KPIs and SLAs; led ROI-based tool evaluations.

Director Software Quality Engineeering at GE Digital, Jul 2018 - Sep 2019 · 1 yr 3 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Led QA, DevOps, and tooling for global digital IoT and automation products. Drove full automation and continuous deployment culture across teams. Standardized release management to ensure on-time, high-quality deliveries.

Manager to Director Software Engineering at Dell EMC, Sep 2006 - Jul 2018 · 11 yrs 11 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Director of Software Engineering Headed QA, DevOps, and automation for Documentum client suite Automated 80% of functional and API testing using BDD with Selenium, JBehave, and REST. Reduced regression efforts by 75% and enabled fast CI feedback loops. Delivered $500K+ savings via Lean/Six Sigma and lab virtualization.

Manager - Performance Engineering at Symphony Services, Aug 2004 - Aug 2006 · 2 yrs 1 mo, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, As a PSR Manager I was responsible for executing the release activities for the product, collaborating with US teams on deciding and finalizing the PSR scenarios to test, work with Product marketing for the KPI ( Key Performance Indicators), co-coordinating the executing of tests, finding the performance bottleneck, investigating the root cause for the regression, DB/SQL tuning activities and working with development on the performance fixes. On the people management front, I was managing a team of 20 highly skilled performance engineers, coaching them mentoring them with their career aspiration.

Education

EMC EDGE, Business Administration and Management, General, Business Administration and Management, General, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

BE, Electronics and Communications, Government BDT College of Engineering, Davanagere