Epifi Technologies Inc. (https://fi.money/) Jan 2021 – Present
An operational role that requires deep technical expertise, patience, perseverance, attention to detail, and the ability to work with people of different personalities under constant time pressure

Technical Project Manager, QA (Intern)    Jan 2021 – May 2021

• Took complete ownership of the testing team and drove the testing and deployment processes for the Android app for Fi, a Neo-banking product 
• Worked daily with the Product, Dev and QA teams to release the Android app for Fi on time, every week 
• Set up company wide processes to log and track development and testing defects for release cycles
• Established and implemented basic trade-off criteria for product stability versus product / development deadlines. Gradually received product and dev team buy-ins for the same after some initial resistance as it altered the routine operating styles.  However, this step was critical to achieving and improving quality and stability for the app.
• Set up and managed testing operations for regular release cycles of the Android app
• Drafted a plan and schedule for complete client-side automation of the Android app
• Set up weekly sprints to track and finish client side automation tests for the Android application
• Set up and conducted daily AM and PM syncs to structure and plan days for the team + sent out regular communication updates for the same
• Managed a total of 5 QA engineers – 2 on Automation + 3 on Manual QA ; time allocation + resource allocation across functional areas  
• Prioritized and reduced defect backlogs, to establish product quality

Technical Project Manager, QA (Consultant)    May 2021 – Oct 2021

• Stabilized the testing and release cycles for the Android app (Manual + Automation) and also started helping on testing for the iOS app + Web communities
• Got internal company-wide recognition for achieving 99.85 % crash free user ratings on the Android app  (from 94% previous quarter) and getting the product to a stable condition,  on account of the QA team catching and reproducing most crash conditions in non-production environments and steadily increasing test coverage via regular automation testing.
• Improved deployment and release turnaround times to within 3 days, to facilitate multiple weekly release cycles
• Persuaded company leadership to change its employment policy for the QA team and invest in hiring QA engineers as full time employees rather than contractors – to reduce organisational churn, and build a stable and strong foundation for the product and company
• Established hiring criteria and conducted interviews for hiring of the first in-house QA team
• Hired and added 3 new FT hires for the QA team  – Grew team size to 8
• Completed one cycle of annual performance reviews for most team members
• Started conducting Biweekly team syncs for the QA team
• Tracked to completion the entire client-side automation for the Android app with just 2 automation engineers, over 6 months, alongside the work for regular release cycles
• Successfully completed several pilot cycles of crowd-sourced testing with third party vendors, to evaluate growth in scale for the QA team – the only project manager to complete these cycles on time within the allocated resource and time constraints, given no previous set up of internal test environments to external entities
• The QA team also took over responsibility for the non-production environment deployments – the team now has complete ownership of non-production environments and testing therein
• Helped the new joinees on the Product and TPM teams onboard and function quickly and effectively in their roles as Build champs for the Android app releases
• Helped the new joinees on the QA team understand and achieve a product quality and stability mindset while making quick decisions during time-sensitive releases

Sr. Technical Program Manager, QA (Consultant)    Oct 2021 – Feb 2022

• The QA team is now at 10+ and growing
• The company has moved to a higher class of VC funding – a 7x jump in valuation from USD 45 million to USD 315 million. The strides in product quality and maturity have been a crucial part of achieving this milestone.
• Not a single employee on the QA team has quit in the past year, the only employee who resigned was moving abroad and said it was the most supportive and happy work environment in her career so far 🙂 People across the company commend the QA team for its visible hard work and dedication. All of this while working remotely 🙂
• My responsibilities extend now to managing testing for the iOS app as well – team now realigned by product verticals rather than by platform
• Tracking and executing UI automation implementation for the iOS app 
• Set up and drafted Q1 OKRs for both the QA and the TPM teams, while collaborating with other TPMs
• Delegating some of my routine responsibilities to new team members, so I can focus on improving team performance by identifying productivity and communication bottlenecks 
  

Sr. Technical Program Manager, QA (Consultant)    Feb 2022 – Present

• Presented previous quarter QA team performance achievements at the monthly company town hall
• Conducted additional testing cycles across both Android and iOS apps to maintain functional + UI parity, in order to provide a uniform user experience
• Started publishing weekly metrics for product quality and team efficiency, to help company and product leadership identify improvement areas across the product (regressions + release blocker statistics, defect profiles across product areas and releases etc)
• Started conducting weekly team and cross-functional release retrospectives to better identify and solve for delays and blockers in the QA+Release process
• Focusing on improving speed of releases for both Android and iOS platforms, as a key performance indicator for the company
• Lost 3 team members in a single quarter, due to increase in performance pressure and accountability post lockdown 🙁 Team attrition for the first time in 15 months.
• Started planning for a better integrated QA + Product development plan, to accommodate for increase in the speed of feature releases

Product Manager Trainee May 2020 – Jul 2020
Digital Product School, Munich

• Worked on creating a product (Plant Mates) that could help people plant more trees
• Prototype: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y2i9ndaOR-LXVbETGuaVbiBUG3Kq6KkN/view?usp=sharing
• Conducted user research (qualitative and quantitative) to identify the pain points around why people did not plant trees
• Guided the team towards creating a product vision and a value proposition for our identified target group
• Conducted usability tests and analyzed findings from the tests to generate valuable insights to improve the product
• Tried to establish Problem-Solution fit for the solution idea

Sr. Appl Developer, Technology Applications Group Jul 2017 – Oct 2017
Georgia Institute of Technology

• The Technology Applications Group (TAG) is responsible for developing gap software systems for finance and administration for the Institute
• Designed and implemented the auditing service to be used across all applications to track user changes
• Researched and developed an ETL process for the group
• Worked on usability testing for GT-Tracs (A system that tracks financial commitments of various colleges and schools within the Institute)

Independent                                                                  May 2014 – Jul 2017
Self

• Worked on developing a predictive technology platform that helps women improve their personal health
• Worked on measures to improve inclusion for women in technology
• Participated in a sociology study at Stanford that is trying to understand the barriers women and women of color, face in technology, and aims to recommend evidence-based measures to improve their retention and progress in the industry

Sr. Software Engineer, iCloud                                   Jun 2011 – May 2014
Apple Inc.

• Engineered server support for Bookmarks syncing for Safari across iOS, Mac OS and Windows
• Engineered server-side support for syncing of iCloud Calendar attachments
• Designed, engineered, tested and deployed applications for effective recovery from disasters/failures across data centers

Team Lead, MobileMe Sync                                        Jun 2010 – May 2011
Apple Inc.

• Engineered and deployed a baseroller tool that compacted server-side changes and history on disk, resulting in a 80% space and doubling cost savings for disk
• Hired and onboarded several new hires, all of whom are successful today at Apple
• Identified product deficiencies and set short to medium-term direction and goals for the team ( 2 onsite + 2 offshore members )
• Managed and directed an offshore team for server-side enhancements and maintenance
• Provided technical guidance and resources for the team to be successful
• Completed performance reviews based on company and organizational criteria
• Worked on engineering geo-fencing features for FindMyPhone and FindMyMac

Sr. Software Engineer, MobileMe Sync                       Jul 2007 – May 2010
Apple Inc.

• Engineered several features and algorithms for the Java-based data synchronization platform for MobileMe, Apple’s service that provides automatic synchronization of calendars and contacts over the air to the iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac OSX, Windows systems and the web
• Designed and engineered the server-side identity matching algorithms that identified similar address book and calendar content, and performed de-duplication
• Worked on engineering features like database optimization, device-server communication protocols, device memory optimization, and improving server scalability and performance
• Worked on the creation and integration of several client-side APIs and frameworks

Software Engineer, Online Platform Team                 Jul 2005 – Jul 2007
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA)

• Responsible for the design and implementation of the EA Identity project that maintained single sign-on and a unified user identity across various EA games and platforms. The team and project won the company wide Best Technology Project of the Quarter award for the third quarter of 2007.
• Devised the strategy for and executed the isolation of various production environments for different departments within EA Online
• Designed and implemented a user association service that maintains relationships and characteristics for the users of EA Online.
• Performed load testing as part of capacity planning for required hardware. Sample usage applications include the Friends List and Blocked List components of Pogo.com and Buddy List applications for online components of EA Games like Need for Speed, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and Madden 07

Graduate Student Assistant                             Sep 2003 – May 2005
Georgia Institute of Technology

• Developed an internal issue tracking system for the QA team from design through documentation
• Carried out unit and system level functional testing, as well as 508 Compliance testing (Accessibility checks) for various internal course tracking systems based on PeopleSoft and SCT Luminis
• Carried out performance testing for systems as well as with browsers, measuring server-side performance statistics as well as client-side parameters like page load times / refresh times
• Carried out data analysis of the load and stress tests of various systems, and presented findings and recommendations of system updates to developers and management