Debashish Panda

Dynamic and results-driven Senior Quality Engineering Manager with 19 years of experience in QA and software testing. Adept at leading cross-functional QA teams to deliver high quality software products on time and within budget. Dedicated towards ensuring exceptional product quality and enhancing customer satisfaction through meticulous testing and quality initiatives.

• Managed end-to-end quality engineering across system testing, system integration testing, and user acceptance testing within a 20-member team comprising functional QA testers (Manual and automation), and test environment support engineer.

• Over 10 Years of experience at onshore locations as an onshore Portfolio Test Manager across geographies (UK (Scotland), Europe (Netherlands), LATAM (Ecuador and Chile), MEA (South Africa and Taiwan) handling multiple projects and stakeholders across various domains like Insurance, Wealth Management, Banking, Hi-Tech. 

• Experienced in managing large programs taking overall accountability from scoping, test strategy & planning, test estimation, test design, test execution, test data, test environments, defect management, reporting, metrics and test closure based on application architecture and business functions with onsite – offshore team structure.

• Managed multiple tasks and responsibilities in high-pressure environments; excelling at pinpointing and resolving problems in early project stages to avoid cost/time expenses.

• Worked constructively with cross functional teams to solve tough challenges efficiently in an always changing environment.

• Oversaw defect management, conducting triage, root cause analysis, and daily defect reviews throughout the lifecycle that significantly reduced post-release defects by 20%.

• Collaborated with stakeholders within and outside the organisation by building strong relationship with various teams, resulting in an 8% reduction in time to market for new product features.
• Generated 75k USD savings for business by driving process standardization, continuous improvement initiatives and automation.

• Developed Test status and Closure reports with metrics in tools like Azure DevOps, Jira, Microfocus ALM, and shared via dashboards and reports (DSR, WSR, MSR, QBR). Prepared and communicated quantitative and qualitative quality benefits, analysis, and risks to stakeholders.

• Proactively managed RAID items (risk, assumption, issue, dependency) across test phases, ensuring effective risk and issue management.

• Led the establishment of a Test Center of Excellence for a high-tech and banking client, utilizing diverse tools, technologies and automation. Achieved a 30% reduction in test time, enhancing overall efficiency.
• Fostered a positive and inclusive work environment, promoting teamwork, collaboration, and mutual respect among team members to promote innovation and bring up new ideas.

• Stay updated with the latest industry trends, QA methodologies, and automation tools and frameworks to provide relevant guidance and suggestions to the team.

• Supported change management process to manage software releases, application patching, and changes to production configurations.

• Engaged non-functional team at the right stage to perform performance and security testing.

• Developed and supported new testing methodologies, best practices, and tools to continuously improve test coverage through both manual and automated processes.

• Hands-on in developing and execution of test scripts, plans, and procedures (manual and automated)

  using Java and Selenium.

• Promoted methodologies such as TDD and BDD to create repeatable re-usable processes.

• Proficient in confluence, share-point wiki, onenote for creating functional documents across projects.

Bachelors in Information Technology from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar, Odisha