Nitin Hanchate

QA Lead / Test Manager with 12 years of experience leading enterprise-wide Quality Assurance initiatives across Banking, FinTech, Trading, Healthcare, Telecom, Airlines and E-commerce domains. Expertise in defining enterprise test strategies, developing comprehensive test plans, establishing QA governance frameworks and leading end-to-end testing across multiple Agile programs. Proven track record of leading end-to-end testing across Functional, Integration, System, Regression, API, Performance and User Acceptance Testing (UAT), ensuring complete requirements traceability, risk mitigation, quality compliance and successful production releases.

Experienced in stakeholder management, defect triage, risk assessment, resource estimation, quality dashboards and Agile/DevOps delivery using JIRA, Selenium, TestNG, Jenkins, SQL and CI/CD practices.

Senior QA Analyst (Freelancer) - Independent Consultant

(2025-07)

• Executed manual and automated test scripts covering functional, regression and integration phases, boosting test coverage by 35% and reducing UAT defects by 20%.
• Initiating corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) to improve software quality.
• Led QA delivery across multiple enterprise releases with 100% on-time delivery.
• Defined project-specific test strategies and QA plans for client engagements.
• Prepared effort estimations, sprint test plans and release reports.
• Presented quality metrics and testing progress to project stakeholders.
• Managed defect lifecycle using JIRA while ensuring timely closure.
• Led end-to-end QA delivery across multiple Agile releases.
• Managed distributed QA teams and coordinated testing activities across cross-functional teams.
• Defined enterprise QA processes and testing standards.
• Facilitated defect triage meetings and release readiness reviews.
• Presented executive quality dashboards to senior management.
• Established risk-based testing approaches and mitigation strategies.
• Improved release quality through shift-left testing and continuous process improvement.
• Mentored junior QA engineers and automation team members.

Senior QA Analyst - Horizontal Integration India Pvt. Ltd. - Bengaluru

(2022-10 - 2025-06)

• Defined comprehensive test strategies, enterprise test plans, and release validation approaches across multiple agile programs.
• Led end-to-end QA delivery for Functional, Integration, System, Regression, API, UAT and Non-functional testing activities.
• Estimated testing effort, resource allocation, sprint capacity and release timelines while supporting project planning.
• Successfully implemented risk-based testing practices across Agile projects.
• Improved release readiness through comprehensive quality dashboards and executive reporting.
• Established QA governance practices including entry/exit criteria, quality gates, traceability matrices and test execution standards.
• Collaborated with Product Owners, Architects, Business Analysts and Delivery Managers to ensure complete business requirement validation.
• Managed a team of five QA engineers while mentoring automation best practices and driving continuous quality improvement initiatives.
• Established standardized QA governance and reporting processes.
• Conducted defect triage meetings, release readiness reviews and quality review sessions with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Built executive QA dashboards and presented test metrics, defect trends, quality KPIs and release health reports.
• Identified testing risks proactively and developed mitigation plans to minimize release impact.
• Integrated Selenium automation into Jenkins CI/CD pipelines, reducing regression execution time by 60%.
• Ensured complete requirement traceability from user stories through production deployment using JIRA.
• Improved overall test coverage by 35% while reducing UAT defect leakage by 20%.

Senior Software Engineer - Marlabs Innovations Pvt. Ltd. - Bengaluru

(2019-07 - 2022-09)

• Coded and implemented 500+ Selenium + Cucumber BDD automated scripts, eliminating 40% of manual testing effort per sprint and cutting average regression cycle from 3 days to under 2.
• Established API testing practice (Postman/Swagger) for 15+ micro services, improving integration coverage by 30% and surfacing service-layer defects 2 sprints earlier than UI testing.
• Identified bugs and worked with development teams for error reduction achieved zero critical defect production escapes over 3 years.
• Designed a reusable test data library across environments, cutting per-cycle setup time by 50% and eliminating data-driven false failures.
• Maintained quality metrics and reported defect status to stakeholders, enabling informed release decisions.

Software Engineer - Diksha Technologies Pvt. Ltd. - Bengaluru

(2016-10 - 2019-07)

• Coded and implemented automation of 60% of the manual regression suite using Selenium WebDriver, raising defect detection rate by 35% via shift-left practices.
• Validated ETL pipelines and data integrity via SQL across source-to-target mappings, ensuring 100% accuracy for 3 business-critical reporting modules.
• Participated closely with software development teams during requirement walkthroughs to identify defects early.

Associate Software Engineer (Freelancer) - Independent Consultant

(2015-09 - 2016-10)

• Executed functional and regression test cases reported defects via Bugzilla and tracked resolution to closure in collaboration with development teams.
• Authored detailed test cases from business requirements and user stories, enabling thorough coverage across application modules.

Windows L1 Engineer - Tecpool Solutions Pvt. Ltd. - Bengaluru

(2014-08 - 2015-09)

• Produced 200+ test cases from BRDs and user stories tracked 150+ defects achieving a 95% closure rate per release.
• Supported test governance, defect lifecycle management and quality reporting standards adopted across teams.

Bachelor of Engineering - Information Science and Engineering - K.L.E. Institute of Technology (2014)