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Katarzyna Kawala

@katarzynakawala

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Senior Test Automation Engineer driving shift-left and scalable frameworks.

Poland

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What I'm looking for

I seek senior QA/automation roles focused on shift-left practices, scalable frameworks, strong cross-functional collaboration, and opportunities to mentor teams and improve CI/CD and observability.

I am a Senior Test Automation Engineer with 10 years' experience in maritime and fintech domains, focused on shift-left/shift-right testing, continuous delivery, monitoring, and building scalable automated frameworks.

I have led test automation efforts across unit, contract and E2E layers using Go, Python and Playwright with TypeScript, and I’ve applied AI tools like GitHub Copilot to increase test efficiency.

I mentor QA and development teams, run workshops to raise quality standards, and implement monitoring and observability with tools such as Sentry, Sensu, Grafana and Datadog to catch issues early in cloud-based, event-driven systems.

I deliver practical results: designing invoicing monitoring, automating Kafka workflows, reducing technical debt via SonarCloud-driven coverage improvements, and delivering production-ready services under tight timelines while promoting Agile and TDD practices.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Senior QA Engineer

90POE / Open Ocean Studio

Jul 2022 - Oct 2025 (3 years 3 months)

Implemented shift-left and shift-right testing and monitoring for a cloud-based SaaS event-driven maritime platform; led unit-to-E2E and contract test automation, reducing issue detection time and improving release reliability. Mentored QAs and developers, introduced AI-assisted automation practices, and developed invoicing monitoring and Kafka workflow tests to ensure timely deliveries.

Test Automation Playwright TypeScript Go Python GraphQL Kafka CI CD

Senior QA Engineer

HL TECH / Hargreaves Lansdown

Mar 2020 - Jun 2022 (2 years 3 months)

Tested and developed backend microservices and introduced TDD practices, delivering a production-ready trading application in 5 weeks while replacing a legacy component and improving contract testing performance. Implemented tests across all levels and supported deployment scalability with Docker and Kubernetes.

Playwright Cypress Selenium Java Groovy Golang Docker Kubernetes Pact TDD

Test Developer

Capco

Mar 2019 - Feb 2020 (11 months)

Built a large-scale contact center test infrastructure post-merger using REST-assured and Selenium/Java, introduced CI/CD pipelines, and led performance and exploratory testing to ensure reliability of consolidated systems. Recruited and mentored junior testers within a Scrum environment.

JMeter Gatling Rest Assured Selenium Java CI CD TestRail Performance Testing

QA Developer

Clear2Pay / FIS

Apr 2017 - Feb 2019 (1 year 10 months)

Developed and maintained Java-based automated tests for a JMS-distributed payments system, validated synchronous and asynchronous workflows, and ensured reliable test execution in CI using Jenkins and Docker. Focused on message ordering and retry handling to improve system reliability.

Java JMS Selenium Cucumber Jenkins Docker Postgres MongoDB Test Automation

Junior QA

Stats Perform

Apr 2016 - Jan 2017 (9 months)

Tested web applications manually and via automation, created and maintained Selenium-based test suites, and integrated tests into CI pipelines to improve regression coverage.

Selenium Webdriver Python Jenkins Git Manual Testing Test Automation

Junior QA

Netizens

Feb 2016 - Apr 2016 (2 months)

Conducted manual testing for mobile and web applications, reported defects, and tracked issues to improve product quality during internship engagements.

Manual Testing Mobile Testing Web Testing Mantis