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Professional Summary
Transformational Test & Release Leader with 15+ years of experience building and scaling high-performing QA and Release Management functions across complex, enterprise-wide Agile environments. Proven track record of establishing Centres of Excellence, embedding governance frameworks, and driving capability uplift across globally distributed teams. Skilled at partnering with senior stakeholders to align testing and release strategies with business goals, and at leading enterprise-wide transformation initiatives that deliver measurable improvements in quality, efficiency, and delivery outcomes. Adept at influencing across business and technology to champion a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence. Experienced operating within highly regulated, compliance-driven environments with strong parallels to financial services.
Core Competencies
Leadership & Transformation
- Test & Release Management Centre of Excellence
- Global Team Leadership
- Capability Uplift
- Mentorship & Coaching
- Governance Frameworks
- Continuous Improvement
- Team Building
- Senior Stakeholder Influence
Test & Release Management
- Release Planning & Governance
- Production Readiness Assessments
- Release Dashboards
- Feature Toggles
- Ready-for-Release Sign-off
- Go-To-Market Coordination
- Defect Leakage
- First-Time Pass Rate
Test Automation
- REST Assured
- Ranorex
- Selenium
- CI/CD Integration (Jenkins, GitLab CI)
- Octopus Deploy
- TeamCity
Performance & Security Testing
- TestRail
- JMeter
- Penetration Testing
- TLS Testing
Test Management
- Jira
- HP Quality Center
- Risk-Based Testing
- QA Metrics
Methodologies & Practices
- SAFe
- Agile
- Scrum
- ISO 9001
- DevOps Delivery
- Compliance Support
- Medical Device Compliance
Data
- Data Pipelines
- SQL
- ETL
Professional Experience
Test & Release Manager
- Led the transformation and ongoing growth of the Test and Release Management function within a SAFe Agile environment, overseeing 50+ QA professionals across onshore, offshore, and nearshore models.
- Responsible for strategy, governance, capability, and delivery excellence across the full SDLC.
Transformation & Centre of Excellence
- Spearheaded enterprise-wide transformation of QA and Release Management practices, harmonising processes across newly acquired business units, legacy teams, and geographically distributed functions.
- Established and led the QA Centre of Excellence, defining standards, governance frameworks, and best practices adopted across all product portfolios.
- Implemented maturity model-driven capability uplift programmes across 50+ engineers, including skills assessments, internal training repositories, and structured career progression pathways for QA Leads, Senior QAs, and Lead QAs — measurably closing skill gaps and reducing onboarding time for new team members.
- Standardised tools, test reporting structures, and release readiness criteria across the organisation, driving consistency and compliance at scale.
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Release Management & Governance
- Owned end-to-end Release Management governance: defined and enforced release readiness criteria, led Production Readiness Assessments, and held final sign-off authority on all sprint and product releases.
- Designed and maintained executive-level release dashboards (via Jira) providing real-time visibility into QA KPIs, defect trends, test execution, and release health — directly informing senior stakeholder decisions.
- Coordinated Go-To-Market activities, interfacing with Client Services to provide assurance on QA coverage and release strategy.
- Implemented defect RCA protocols, feature toggle strategies, and hotfix processes to de-risk releases and maintain defect leakage below target thresholds.
- Managed compliance sign-offs including TLS testing, CIS2, HPCA certificate renewals, ISO-9001 internal and external audits, and NHS digital standards adherence.
Stakeholder Partnership & Strategic Alignment
- Partnered with senior stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, and Compliance to align quality metrics, testing strategies, and delivery outcomes with enterprise goals.
- Presented QA and release strategy at every ART planning event; facilitated working groups for automation tooling, API strategy, and process best practices.
- Influenced and aligned cross-functional teams during Email and Jira cloud migrations, OIDC integrations, and major platform reskins — delivering with minimal disruption.
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Delivery & Continuous Improvement
- Defined QA and release strategies for web, desktop, and mobile applications, ensuring reliability and adherence to ISO and NHS digital standards.
- Designed and implemented scalable automation frameworks (Selenium, Ranorex, REST Assured) integrated into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI), reducing regression cycle time by 40%.
- Drove continuous improvement across defect leakage, first-time pass rate, and regression coverage through regular metrics reporting and data-driven decision-making.
- Pioneered adoption of new testing tools and ways of working — including feature toggle strategies, cloud-based environment provisioning, and API-first test approaches — improving release safety and team agility across the organisation.
- Championed a ‘Do It Right First Time’ quality culture, embedding it across all teams and portfolios.
Key Achievements
- Reduced regression cycle time by 40% through the rollout of scalable automation frameworks integrated into CI/CD pipelines across all product lines.
- Maintained defect leakage below 10% consistently across 7 product releases through rigorous governance, RCA protocols, and risk-based testing.
- Delivered 182 releases per quarter with zero critical post-release defects, demonstrating release management excellence at scale.
QA Team Leader
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Oversaw QA delivery for 33+ client projects involving ETL pipelines, data validation, and multi-channel communications.
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Built and scaled a 12-member QA team, executing test strategies for relational data, data warehouses, and analytics tools.
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Managed agile ceremonies, documentation, and QA governance across strict SLAs and deadlines.
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Led testing efforts for communications and pharmacy clients, including automation using Selenium and backend validation.
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Worked across onshore/offshore delivery models, supporting large-scale data integration and Informatica-based ETL processes.
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Recognised multiple times for delivery excellence and client satisfaction.
Education
Certifications
- SAFe Trained
- ISTQB-ISEB Certified
- Microsoft SQL Server Trained
- Snowflake Trained
- Quality Center 9.0
- Quick Test Professional
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