Profile
Hey, I am Irfan, a software quality leader with 14+ years in software quality and 7+ years leading quality engineering teams, enabling teams to deliver quality software with speed, security and scale. I am Engineering Manager, QA at McKinsey & Company in Bengaluru. Views on the current role are my own.
I have worked as a full-stack developer across web, mobile and backend, with a focus on software quality, and I like experimenting with the latest in tech and tools. I also created CheckOps, a directory of software testing tech and tools with a newsletter, to help developers find and stay updated with the latest in testing.
Below is my professional timeline, to give you an idea of my journey so far. You can also check my LinkedIn for more details.
A shorter record is on the résumé page (résumé PDF).
Jan 2025 — Present
A 40+ member QA organisation, through managers and leads. Views are my own.
Apr 2023 — Dec 2024
Test and Platform Engineering: three teams (Platform, UG BAU, Test Automation) of 12+ senior SDEs and SDETs. VDP and GDPR programmes reported to the CIO.
Apr 2022 — Apr 2023
Founded the Platform team (5+ SDEs, 10+ SDETs). Release engineering on Docker, EKS, and Spinnaker.
Apr 2020 — Mar 2022
Test Engineering scaled to 20+ SDETs, plus a 5-member DevOps/SRE team. Release quality for all products, reporting to the CTO.
Apr 2018 — Mar 2020
Founded and led DevOps, SRE and Tech Support (10+), reporting to the CTO.
Feb 2016 — Mar 2018
Founded Test Engineering and led 6 SDETs, reporting to the Head of Engineering.
Apr 2015 — Feb 2016
Order-management quality, end to end.
Aug 2012 — Apr 2015
End-to-end testing of the telecom product suite on the in-house automation framework.
Checking answers a narrow question: does it do the thing we already named? Testing asks what else can happen. Operations asks whether the answer is still true after the deploy. Teams split those questions across job titles and then act surprised when the release notes and the incident channel disagree.
Tools matter, and they are not the practice. A model can propose a test, a mock, or a review comment. It cannot attend the production symptom you did not describe. The check still has to be owned by someone who understands the system.
Engineering Manager, QA. The role leads a 40+ member QA organisation through managers and leads. QA moved from manual, to automated, to fully agentic QA engineering. I designed and delivered an AI agentic testing eval framework and scaled it to platform engineering teams.
Two titles, kept separate. Engineering Manager, April 2022 to April 2023. Senior Engineering Manager, April 2023 to December 2024.
As Engineering Manager I founded the Platform team: 5+ SDEs and 10+ SDETs. As Senior Engineering Manager I headed Test and Platform Engineering, three teams (Platform, UG BAU, and Test Automation) of 12+ senior SDEs and SDETs, and ran the org-wide VDP security and GDPR compliance programmes, reporting to the CIO.
Three titles in sequence: Lead QA Engineer, Release Manager, then QA Manager. I founded Test Engineering and led 6 SDETs, reporting to the Head of Engineering. As Release Manager I founded DevOps, SRE, and Tech Support (10+), reporting to the CTO. As QA Manager, Test Engineering was 20+ SDETs and DevOps/SRE was a 5-member team, with release quality for all products.
Happy to discuss relevant engineering and quality leadership opportunities. Email [email protected]. Code is on GitHub. Professional profile is on LinkedIn.
I created CheckOps, a test automation tools and tech directory. It lives at checkops.com.