I help organizations significantly enhance product quality and customer satisfaction. With over 20 years of hands-on experience, I collaborate with and guide cross-functional teams to implement effective Agile methodologies tailored to their Software Development Life Cycle. Leveraging my expertise in Quality Assurance, I improve manual and automation test strategies and infrastructure, resulting in more efficient release cycles, thorough deliverables, reduced costs, and increased ROI. I have built onsite, offshore, and remote QA teams from the ground up, led quality initiatives as a QA evangelist, educated teams on best practices, and driven organization-wide quality culture. I am a go-to expert in functional, performance, regression, UAT, reliability, and security testing; I translate requirements into test plans, define done criteria, and implement robust automation and dashboards to measure quality.

Chetan Wakade

I help organizations significantly enhance product quality and customer satisfaction. With over 20 years of hands-on experience, I collaborate with and guide cross-functional teams to implement effective Agile methodologies tailored to their Software Development Life Cycle. Leveraging my expertise in Quality Assurance, I improve manual and automation test strategies and infrastructure, resulting in more efficient release cycles, thorough deliverables, reduced costs, and increased ROI. I have built onsite, offshore, and remote QA teams from the ground up, led quality initiatives as a QA evangelist, educated teams on best practices, and driven organization-wide quality culture. I am a go-to expert in functional, performance, regression, UAT, reliability, and security testing; I translate requirements into test plans, define done criteria, and implement robust automation and dashboards to measure quality.

Available to hire

I help organizations significantly enhance product quality and customer satisfaction. With over 20 years of hands-on experience, I collaborate with and guide cross-functional teams to implement effective Agile methodologies tailored to their Software Development Life Cycle. Leveraging my expertise in Quality Assurance, I improve manual and automation test strategies and infrastructure, resulting in more efficient release cycles, thorough deliverables, reduced costs, and increased ROI.

I have built onsite, offshore, and remote QA teams from the ground up, led quality initiatives as a QA evangelist, educated teams on best practices, and driven organization-wide quality culture. I am a go-to expert in functional, performance, regression, UAT, reliability, and security testing; I translate requirements into test plans, define done criteria, and implement robust automation and dashboards to measure quality.

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Experience Level

Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Intermediate
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Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
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Intermediate
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Work Experience

QA Lead at Hogarth @ Apple
July 1, 2024 - Present
Leading a team of front-end QA engineers, driving quality initiatives, applying industry best practices, and improving processes to ensure quality goals are met across desktop and mobile environments.
Career Break / Certifications
March 1, 2023 - June 1, 2024
Career break focusing on professional certifications and courses including PMI-ACP, AI Foundations (Machine Learning), Python, Azure Logic Apps, and Datadog's Building and Monitoring Generative AI.
QA Manager at Highspot
October 1, 2022 - February 28, 2023
Drove quality initiatives for three development teams; improved end-to-end, UI, API, and regression testing; increased test automation by 30% for UI and back-end; wrote functional requirements and acceptance criteria; collaborated across lines of business.
Sr. QA Manager at Audible Magic Corporation
July 1, 2017 - October 31, 2022
Built a 7-person onsite QA team; implemented organization-wide quality initiatives; automated testing across AWS microservices and legacy systems; led to increased customer satisfaction and efficiency; defined test infrastructure and dashboards.
QA Lead at Ooyala Inc.
May 1, 2016 - June 30, 2017
Led QA for online video platform; managed onsite and offshore SDET teams; improved test planning and automation hooks; reduced manual efforts through automation across browser/device suites.
Senior Technical Team Lead at eMeter, A Siemens Business
March 1, 2007 - May 31, 2016
Led the construction of the eMeter Analytics Foundation platform; migrated to Hadoop/AWS stack; built cloud architecture with Hadoop ecosystem; delivered high availability, security and reliability; won 2013 Smart Grid R&D Project of the Year for ELM.
Programmer Analyst at Allied Business Consulting Inc.
May 1, 2006 - March 31, 2007
Worked on Meter Data Management; built test plans and test cases; conducted smoke and regression tests; communicated coverage and anomalies to QA, development and PM teams.
Testing Engineer at Amdocs, Montreal - Bell Canada
June 1, 2005 - April 30, 2006
End-to-end testing for S ympa tico product; simulated production issues and verified fixes; communicated test coverage and readiness for release.
Sr. QA Engineer at Cybage Software Pvt Ltd
December 1, 2003 - June 30, 2005
Senior QA engineer responsible for testing, QA process improvements, and coordinating test plans for multiple projects.
Graduate Engineer Trainee at Cosmo Films Ltd
September 1, 2002 - November 30, 2003
Developed ERP forms and reports; authored and executed GUI, functionality, end-to-end, UAT and regression tests.

Education

PG Diploma in Advanced Computing Techniques and Tools at PICT, Pune
January 11, 2030 - December 11, 2025
Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) at Pune University
January 11, 2030 - December 11, 2025

Qualifications

PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner)
March 1, 2023 - December 11, 2025
Artificial Intelligence Foundations: Machine Learning
March 1, 2023 - December 11, 2025
Datadog's Building and Monitoring Generative AI
March 1, 2023 - December 11, 2025
Python Programming
March 1, 2023 - December 11, 2025

Industry Experience

Software & Internet, Media & Entertainment, Professional Services, Education