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Ali Balkot

@alibalkot

Message

Senior QA/Automation lead driving robust test automation, AI validation, and QA team growth.

United Arab Emirates

Message

What I'm looking for

I seek a leadership QA role where I can shape QA strategy, build automation frameworks, mentor teams, and ensure reliable, scalable releases in an engineering-driven culture.

I am an accomplished Senior/Lead QA Engineer with 11+ years' experience building automation frameworks, defining QA strategy, and leading cross-functional teams across fintech, retail and AI products. I have a proven record of implementing CI/CD-integrated pipelines, shifting testing left, and improving release quality and efficiency.

I have led distributed teams of up to 20 engineers, designed frameworks using Appium, Selenium, RestAssured, K6 and more, and introduced AI/ML model validation and production monitoring. I focus on mentoring engineers, driving QA culture, and delivering scalable, reliable testing solutions that reduce defects and accelerate releases.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

QA Lead

Current

Deeplight AI

Oct 2024 - Present (1 year 2 months)

Led QA strategy for AI/ML products, implemented CI/CD automated pipelines and model validation, and built a QA team while increasing test coverage by 40% and reducing post-release defects.

Test Automation CI CD API Testing UI Testing Team Leadership Python Java

QA Chapter Lead

Vision Bank

Dec 2022 - Oct 2024 (1 year 10 months)

Formulated and executed company-wide QA strategy, led 20 distributed QA engineers, restructured QA to improve operational efficiency by 20% and enhanced CI/CD pipeline efficiency by 45%.

QA Strategy Team Leadership Appium Java CI CD Load Testing Recruitment

Lead QA Engineer

The Very Group

Mar 2021 - Dec 2022 (1 year 9 months)

Led testing for migration from IBM Fusion to AWS, developed K6-based test frameworks and automated functional and non-functional tests, improving testing efficiency and accuracy by 38%.

Performance Testing Cloud Migration Automation CI CD Chaos Testing AWS Testing Frameworks Reporting

Lead SDET

Curve

Mar 2019 - Mar 2021 (2 years)

Managed an SDET team, designed a hybrid mobile automation framework with Appium/Java/Cucumber, improved productivity by 27%, and integrated test frameworks into CI/CD for payments testing.

Appium Java Cucumber Automation CI CD Payment Testing Data Integrity Go Team Management

Senior Automation Engineer

Experian

Nov 2018 - Mar 2019 (4 months)

Engineered and managed automated test suites using Selenium, Java, Cucumber and TestNG, and mentored junior QA engineers to align testing with Agile practices.

Selenium Java Cucumber TestNG Test Planning Agile Mentoring CI CD

Senior QA Engineer

Reed Exhibitions

May 2018 - Nov 2018 (6 months)

Planned and executed end-to-end AEM CMS testing, administered AWS infrastructure, and improved Selenium WebDriver framework efficiency by 15% while introducing BrowserStack for cross-browser testing.

AEM Testing AWS Selenium BrowserStack Selenium Webdriver Automation Infrastructure Performance Testing CI CD

Senior QA Engineer

Laundrapp

Nov 2017 - May 2018 (6 months)

Developed and maintained automated test suites using Appium, Java and Cucumber, and performed performance/load testing on AWS using JMeter.

Appium Java Cucumber JMeter Performance Testing Test Automation AWS Mobile Testing CI CD

Lead QA Engineer

International Game Technology

Nov 2016 - Nov 2017 (1 year)

Revamped testing strategy across multiple projects, implemented Appium for mobile game automation and conducted API validation using SoapUI.

Test Strategy Appium Automation API Testing SoapUI

Automation Test Engineer

Sky

Oct 2015 - Nov 2016 (1 year 1 month)

Built a Selenium WebDriver framework with Java, automated mobile deployments via Jenkins and Appium, and tested RESTful APIs using Postman.

Selenium Java Appium Jenkins API Testing Postman Automation CI CD

Software Developer in Test

Capita

Sep 2014 - Sep 2015 (1 year)

Performed database validation and stress testing for Transport for London projects and supported agile development practices to ensure system reliability.