QA / Automation Test Engineer · Senior · 10+ yrs

Priyanka Deshmukh

QA Lead / Head of Quality Engineering

Professional summary

Quality engineering leader with 11 years owning test strategy and automation architecture across fintech, e-commerce and healthtech. Designs framework standards spanning Selenium, Cypress, Playwright and API testing, leads QA teams of 8–20, and ties quality metrics to release velocity and revenue. Built CI/CD quality gates org-wide, drove shift-left testing culture, and grew engineers into leads. Measures success in escaped-defect rate, release confidence and the careers built along the way.

4M+

Daily users covered

72%

Fewer escaped defects

20

QA engineers led

Skills

Leadership

QA strategy & roadmapTeam building (8–20)Hiring & mentoringQuality metrics & SLAsStakeholder alignment

Framework architecture

SeleniumCypressPlaywrightPage Object ModelBDD (Cucumber)Hybrid frameworks

Quality engineering

API testing (REST Assured)Performance (JMeter, k6)Contract testingTest data managementShift-left & shift-right

Platform & process

CI/CD quality gatesJenkinsGitHub ActionsDocker / KubernetesJIRA / XrayObservability

Work experience

Head of Quality Engineering · Arclight Commerce

Mar 2019Present

Bengaluru

  • Lead a 20-person QA org across 6 product squads, owning the test strategy and automation architecture for a platform serving 4M+ daily users.
  • Architected a unified Playwright + REST Assured framework adopted across all squads, lifting automated regression coverage from 31% to 81% and cutting release cycle time 55%.
  • Established CI/CD quality gates and a defect-escape SLA, reducing production-escaped defects 72% and raising release confidence to weekly shipping.
  • Manage a ₹2.4 crore annual QA budget and tooling portfolio; consolidated 4 overlapping test tools into 2, saving ~₹40L/year.
  • Hired 14 engineers and grew 3 into QA leads; built the shift-left review practice and test-strategy playbook used company-wide.

QA Lead / Test Architect · Medibridge Health

Jun 2015Feb 2019

Mumbai

  • Led a team of 9 building the automation framework (Selenium + TestNG) for a HIPAA-aligned patient platform across 25+ hospitals.
  • Introduced API testing and CI gating, cutting regression effort 60% and enabling the first reliable bi-weekly release train.

Senior QA / Automation Engineer · Earlier roles — Cognizant, Wipro

20132015

India

  • Built Selenium suites and managed manual + automation test cycles across banking and retail products; promoted twice for delivery and test leadership.

Education

B.E. Information Science & Engineering

2013

BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru

Certifications

ISTQB Expert Level — Test Management

ISTQB · 2021

Certified Agile Tester (ISQI)

iSQI · 2019

Selected achievements

Cut production-escaped defects 72% org-wide by introducing CI/CD quality gates and a defect-escape SLA.

Consolidated 4 test tools into 2, saving ~₹40L/year while raising automated coverage from 31% to 81%.

Speaker, SeleniumConf India 2023 — "Test strategy that scales: from flaky suites to weekly releases."

Mentor at a women-in-QA fellowship; advises 2 early-stage startups on quality engineering practices.

See the work in 3D

Explore Priyanka's interactive WebGL portfolio — projects, skills and a way to get in touch.