Nita Akunuri

Process-oriented and results-driven QA Lead/Release Manager with over 15 years of experience in software testing, integration leadership, and release coordination across retail, financial, e-commerce, healthcare, and utilities domains. Adept at building high-performing QA teams, aligning testing strategies with business objectives, and driving scalable solutions in Agile and hybrid environments. Known for aligning testing and release strategies with product goals, fostering strong collaboration between business and technical teams, and enabling data‑driven decision‑making to support scalable, customer‑centric solutions.

QA Lead / Release Manager - Advance Auto Parts - Richmond, VA

(2014-04)

Worked as a QA lead/Release manager for multiple projects including Centralized Pricing Engine with SAAS integration with Blue Yonder tool, Promo and Pricing Engine, Centralized Tax Service, Google Search Engine Integration, Palantir Price Integration for Retail pricing and Professional Pricing, APEX – catalog for Store systems, Commerce Services enhancements for B2B, FDO Vision for Exploris, and Worldpac and exploris Integrations. Interacted with multiple teams for achieving the deliverables for multiple phases.

• Overseen the planning and execution of testing activities across multiple projects and teams
• Owned and executed end-to-end release planning by initiating Change Requests (CRs), validating scope, and orchestrating cross-functional coordination for smooth delivery
• Collaborated with development, DevOps, and product teams to define release schedules and coordinate deployment activities, ensuring seamless and timely releases
• Managed onshore and offshore teams
• Managed risk assessments and release documentation, facilitating go/no-go decisions and post-release retrospectives
• Documented the test strategy for the project involving testing scope, methods, deliverables, RACI matrix for QA on multiple teams
• Implemented and enforced test automation frameworks, reducing manual testing time by 70% and improving defect detection rates
• Mentored team members on the functionality flow of the project
• Designed and executed detailed test cases and scripts identifying and documenting critical defects and UI inconsistencies
• Analyzed QA data and present insights to senior management for strategic decision-making
• Led initiatives for process improvement, automation, and scalability of QA operations
• Served as a key liaison between technical teams and business stakeholders to gather, clarify, and translate business requirements into actionable QA artifacts

Sr. QA Analyst - Advance Auto Parts - Richmond, VA

(2017-07 - 2020-04)

QA Analyst - Advance Auto Parts - Richmond, VA

(2014-04 - 2017-06)

Integration Test Lead - Capital One - Richmond, VA

(2013-10 - 2014-02)

Project HERMES involves servicing migrations. There are two phases of the project which involves migrating HE portfolio from Profile to MSP (Mortgage Servicing Platform) and migrating the rest of HE and HELOC accounts from ALS to MSP. In order to continue servicing Capital One 360 HE portfolio, the impacted platforms will have appropriate association of these accounts with the Bank customer profiles.

This involves proper integration testing in various environments to validate the data flow through the impacted systems. For the migration from ALS to MSP, the payments, advances, transfers, overdraft protection, servicing and reporting functionalities get impacted which involves changes to different platforms.

• Interacted with the Integrated BSA to review Business requirements and stories for creation of the test scenarios
• Created the Release Test Strategy document for the project which highlights the scope for each impacted platforms, end to end scenarios, risks and assumptions, dependencies, test environment and test data setup details
• Interacted with Test Data Management team for setting up the data in different environments for testing
• Requested and provided accesses, exceptions and waiver forms to the necessary resources for different platforms
• Created the integrated test scenarios with input from the impacted platforms
• Worked to identify the test data needs for the platforms and managed the test data requests accordingly
• Participated in the Release planning sessions to define integration and testing stories

Sr. Test Analyst - Supreme Court of Virginia - Richmond, VA

(2013-02 - 2013-08)

CCMS - A Case Management System that handles all perspective of the circuit court cases encompassing the business functionalities that is currently available in the legacy application along with the required data elements and business rules. CCMS has programmed interfaces with the State Police, DMV and FMS application. The system would have means for displaying case information, entering a new case, case browsing, case tracking, modifying existing case, saving a case in persistent store, generating reports based on cases stored in the system.

The system would provide the capability of categorizing cases into groups' known as divisions based on the type of case. Currently there are six divisions namely, criminal, civil (chancery), juvenile appeal, adoption, sealed indictments and miscellaneous.

• Performed System testing, Retesting, Integration testing, Regression testing for CCMS
• Documented Test plan and test cases for new enhancements in the project
• Documented the defects in ClearQuest and communicated the same with the team members
• Wrote and executed the test scripts in Rational Performance Tester for Performance testing for different scenarios to estimate the load and endurance of the system
• Performed 30min load testing and 4-8 hour endurance testing on the system to gauge the system load performance on the DB server and App servers
• Wrote DB Scripts for validation of the data in Squirrel Client
• Performed validation testing for actions performed in HermesJMS and SoapUI by the JAVA client
• Performed periodical regression testing for new defects and new enhancements in CCMS

Sr. QA - Capital One

(2010-06 - 2012-07)

WWW & portal for Canada

Sr. Test Lead/Analyst - Schindler Technologies - Remote

(2012-09 - 2013-02)

Gartner EOD - Gartner Events On Demand is a website that provides rich multimedia presentations of sessions from past Gartner summits seminars and conferences. These online presentations include fully synchronized audio and slides. Users can login into the site and access the presentations and slides available in the website. An admin module is also available to manage the access rights of the users. The site also features upcoming events, sponsored sessions and free session for eligible users.

• Performed System testing and Regression testing using business requirements and specifications
• Documented Test plan and test cases required for the project
• Managed the defects in Bugzilla in each phase of testing
• Communicated the test plan, defects and the progress of the testing phase with the client weekly
• Performed Production validation testing after the release
• Maintained the website after the release and monitored for any issues

Masters - Computer Sciences - University of Houston

Bachelors - Technology (Computer Sciences) - GPREC/SK University