Nishant Kande
Senior Technology & Quality Engineering Leader
Pune
Summary
Senior Technology & Quality Engineering Leader with 19+ years of experience driving enterprise IT transformation, modern QA engineering, automation strategy, DevOps maturity, cloud readiness, and AI-assisted quality optimization. Proven ability to lead large global engineering organizations (90+ engineers) while partnering with Product, Cloud Ops, DevOps, and Security to enforce engineering discipline, improve release readiness, and deliver high-quality, scalable, cloud-native products. Expert in applying AI/ML for predictive risk analytics, automated test generation, failure clustering, and intelligent regression prioritization. Adept at strengthening engineering accountability, elevating test maturity, reducing rework, and improving transparency through real-time dashboards and proactive governance.
Overview
20
20
years of professional experience
3
3
Certifications
Work History
Senior Technology & Quality Engineering
Zinnia Digital Pvt Ltd
12.2020 - Current
- Led and mentored a high-performing global quality organization focused on automation, engineering discipline, operational excellence, and continuous improvement.
- Reported directly to the CTO, providing transparent visibility into defect trends, risks, vulnerabilities, automation gaps, and release readiness.
- Enforced engineering readiness criteria, including unit test completeness, static analysis, and early defect remediation.
- Championed modern QE practices, including API, UI, scalability, performance, and shift-left testing.
- Applied AI/ML for predictive analytics, failure clustering, regression optimization, and test case generation.
- Integrated automation into CI/CD pipelines, ensuring environment stability, observability, and reliable deployments.
- Ensured that requirements and acceptance criteria were clear, testable, and complete prior to development.
- Delivered weekly quality dashboards covering defect aging, vulnerabilities, automation coverage, regression outcomes, and release readiness.
- Supported release governance, ensuring deployments met quality, security, and operational criteria.
- Collaborated with Product, DevOps, Cloud Ops, Security, and Engineering to resolve quality-impacting friction points.
- Partnered with Cloud Ops, BI, and IT Ops to uplift operational quality and reliability engineering.
- Directed cloud-native testing, migration readiness, microservices validation, and pipeline quality.
- Conducted governance with CXO/VP-level leadership for accurate quality visibility.
Technology & Quality Engineering Manager
Symantec / Veritas Technologies
08.2013 - 10.2020
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Azure, GitHub Actions), reducing release time by 60%.
- Oversaw 60+ SaaS/Cloud applications; implemented DevOps CI/CD with 90% automation.
- Drove Agile transformation and continuous testing adoption across global teams.
Technology & Quality Engineering Lead
T-Systems / Cognizant Technology Solutions Germany, Aachen
01.2010 - 08.2013
- Directed T-Mobile's strategic releases; ensured on-time production cutovers.
- Automated build/deployment pipelines achieve an 80% annual cost reduction.
Programmer Analyst /Technical Project Lead
- J.P. Morgan Chase / Cognizant Technology Solutions US Corp, New York
02.2006 - 12.2009
- Worked closely with clients to establish specifications and system designs.
- Delivered Java, PL-SQL, and Unix-based solutions for global financial operations.
- Communicated complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders during project discussions and progress updates.
- Tested and deployed scalable and highly available software products.
Education
B.Tech - Computer Science & Engineering
NIT Raipur
Skills
- Quality Engineering Leadership
- Test Automation Strategy (API/UI, Cloud, Microservices)
- AI/ML-Driven Test Optimization & Predictive Analytics
- Release Readiness & Engineering Governance
- CI/CD Integration, DevOps QA, Cloud-Native Testing
- Performance, Scalability & Reliability Engineering
- Shift-Left Quality Practices & Engineering Readiness Checks
- Executive Dashboards & Data-Driven Decisioning
- Defect Trend Analysis, Escaped Defects, Vulnerability Insights
- Cross-Functional Leadership
- Conflict Resolution & Upstream Quality Influence
- Global Team Leadership (Multi-timezone Delivery)
- Programming: Python, Java, Groovy, JavaScript, SQL, Shell/Bash
- Automation: Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, PyTest, TestNG, Robot Framework, Cucumber, JUnit, Katalon
- DevOps & CI/CD: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes
- Cloud: AWS, Azure
- Testing Tools: qTest, Jira, TestRail, Postman, REST Assured, JMeter
- Databases: Oracle, PostgreSQL, MongoDB
- Observability: Datadog, Splunk
Certification
Agile / Scrum
Accomplishments
- Achieved 40% faster releases through AI-driven automation and predictive analytics.
- Implemented self-healing automation reducing flaky test failures by 60%.
- Designed AI-led failure clustering reducing triage time by over 50%.
- Increased automation coverage across UI, API, microservices, and cloud workflows without increasing headcount.
- Built real-time quality dashboards visualizing defect aging, vulnerabilities, and readiness signals.
- Improved requirement completeness and reduced rework through upstream quality influence.
- Reduced escaped defects via predictive analytics and shift-left adoption.
Timeline
Senior Technology & Quality Engineering
Zinnia Digital Pvt Ltd
12.2020 - Current
Technology & Quality Engineering Manager
Symantec / Veritas Technologies
08.2013 - 10.2020
Technology & Quality Engineering Lead
T-Systems / Cognizant Technology Solutions Germany, Aachen
01.2010 - 08.2013
Programmer Analyst /Technical Project Lead
- J.P. Morgan Chase / Cognizant Technology Solutions US Corp, New York
02.2006 - 12.2009
B.Tech - Computer Science & Engineering
NIT Raipur