Varun Thimmappa
Automation Developer
Bangalore,Karnataka
Summary
A quick thinker and highly adaptable professional, known for rapidly mastering complex domains such as Cisco 360 rebate platforms, and translating them into scalable automation solutions. Proven expertise in Varicent, Symon AI, and UiPath, with a strong track record of architecting robust automation frameworks across UI, API, and database layers. Demonstrated success in building and leading high-performing teams, transitioning from automation to development roles, and driving measurable business impact—including $100K+ cost savings, 180+ FTE hours saved, and significant reductions in regression cycle time. Adept at Agile delivery, cloud-based automation on AWS, and championing automation-first strategies that improve quality, speed, and reliability of complex enterprise systems.
Overview
12
12
years of professional experience
3
3
Languages
5
5
Certificates
Work History
Software Engineer
CISCO
03.2024 - Current
- Developed deep domain expertise in the Cisco 360 program and complex rebate structures, enabling the design and execution of end-to-end test automation strategies across the platform.
- Designed and developed custom MCP solutions integrated with the Varicent platform using GitHub Copilot, enhancing data traceability and transparency for the support team by exposing business. Further enhanced the solution by implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities to enable faster, context-aware data retrieval, and improved decision support.
- Transitioned from Test Automation Engineer to Varicent and Symon AI Developer based on demonstrated impact, strong domain knowledge, and contributions toward refining and stabilizing business requirements.
- Built and scaled an automation testing team of 10 manual testers, up skilling them in automation concepts and test script development, significantly accelerating automation adoption.
- Introduced in-sprint automation and an “automation-first” approach within Agile delivery, improving early defect detection and reducing regression cycle time.
- Designed and implemented over 1,500 automated test scripts spanning the database, UI, and API layers, ensuring comprehensive coverage and validation of complex rebate workflows.
- Conducted end-to-end tool evaluation of UiPath for test automation, providing actionable feature enhancement recommendations to the UiPath product team.
- Architected a robust, scalable automation framework for the rebate calculation engine built on Varicent and Symon AI, ensuring accuracy, reusability, and long-term maintainability.
Lead and Solution Architect – RPA
Hudson’s Bay Company (Saks off 5th)
03.2019 - 02.2024
- Led a team of six RPA engineers to identify and prioritize automation opportunities by partnering with stakeholders across Merchandising, Finance, HR, Supply Chain, Marketing, and Digital Operations, driving project selection based on cost reduction and FTE savings.
- Owned the end-to-end RPA lifecycle—discovery, solution design, development, enhancement, debugging, and testing—while producing process design documents (PDDs) and solution design documents (SDDs) to ensure scalable and maintainable bot delivery.
- Delivered 30+ production-ready RPA bots, achieving over $100K in annual cost savings and 180 FTE hours saved, with rapid turnaround by designing and deploying automations within 2 to 3 days for critical business processes.
- Designed and implemented cloud-based RPA infrastructure on AWS, including database setup, UiPath Orchestrator configuration, and EC2 execution environments to support secure, scalable bot operations.
- Built reusable and configurable automation solutions using UiPath RE Framework, Orchestrator, AI Fabric, and Document Understanding, enabling AI/ML-driven workflows, and adaptability to evolving business requirements.
Automation Test Engineer
JC Penney
09.2016 - 12.2018
- Led automation initiatives by designing and executing test frameworks using Core Java, Selenium WebDriver, RESTful APIs, POM, and BDD Cucumber (QMetry), resulting in a 40%+ reduction in manual testing effort, and improved release stability.
- Owned end-to-end test coverage by developing and maintaining over 800 automated test cases across mobile and desktop platforms, ensuring scalable, reusable automation aligned with CI/CD pipelines.
- Championed quality from a customer perspective by driving exploratory testing, identifying requirement gaps early, and raising change defects that improved usability, and reduced production issues.
Software Test Engineer
UST Global Technologies
08.2013 - 09.2016
- Designed and implemented a modular Test Automation Framework, leveraging Eggplant Functional Automation and SenseTalk, enabling efficient GUI test execution, centralized test management, and comprehensive reporting by identifying and reusing common functional modules.
Education
BE -
SDM institute of technology
Mangalore01.2013
Skills
Varicent
Symon AI
UiPath
Robocorp
Selenium
Java
Python
SQL
AWS
Eggplant
AI Fabric
Document understanding
Timeline
Software Engineer
CISCO
03.2024 - Current
Lead and Solution Architect – RPA
Hudson’s Bay Company (Saks off 5th)
03.2019 - 02.2024
Automation Test Engineer
JC Penney
09.2016 - 12.2018
Software Test Engineer
UST Global Technologies
08.2013 - 09.2016
BE -
SDM institute of technology
Certification
Level 3 - Uipath Advanced Training