Vikas Thakur

Project: Lead Finance (Leading US Finance Firm)

Description: A comprehensive insurance automation platform designed to streamline policy management, quote generation, and claims processing. The project focused on building a secure, user-friendly web application.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Led 8 Scrum teams (~90 members) across cloud, embedded, and security domains, improving delivery predictability by 35%.
• Facilitated Scrum & SAFe ceremonies, achieving 95% sprint commitment adherence.
• Reduced defect leakage by 18% through enhanced definition of done and test automation integration.
• Coordinated stakeholder engagement across the U.S. and India, boosting stakeholder satisfaction score by 20%.
• Organized Agile workshops that elevated team Agile maturity score from 2.5 to 4.1.
• Implemented Kanban workflows for QA and DevOps, optimizing work-in-progress limits and enhancing cycle time consistency.
• Developed and managed release plans, PI planning (SAFe), and project roadmaps to ensure milestone commitments were met.
• Monitored project KPIs, including ROI, release burn-up, budget variance, and risk logs, presenting progress in governance forums.
• Drove organizational change by promoting Agile at scale (SAFe) to enhance delivery maturity.

Project: Lead FinTech (Leading UK Trade Finance Firm)

Description: It is an innovative technology company that has built a powerful AI-driven platform by trade experts. Errors and discrepancies are automatically highlighted with the press of a button, saving time and giving peace of mind to reduce your operational and compliance risks.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Facilitated over 150 Scrum ceremonies (Sprint Planning, Reviews, Retrospectives, Daily Standups), ensuring smooth delivery across two Agile teams.
• Improved sprint predictability by 25% through velocity tracking and burn-down/burn-up reporting.
• Coached teams on SAFe principles, enabling successful PI Planning with 95% commitment accuracy.
• Partnered with Product Owners to refine and prioritize the backlog, reducing carry-over stories by 30%.
• Drove Kanban adoption for maintenance work, cutting cycle time by 20%.
• Facilitated Agile ceremonies (Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Planning, Reviews, Retrospectives) for cross-functional teams delivering trade finance solutions (LC issuance, SWIFT integration, and invoice discounting).
• Collaborated with product owners and stakeholders to groom and prioritize backlog items that were aligned with regulatory compliance, transaction processing, and risk mitigation.
• Identified and resolved legacy system integration, cross-border payment workflows, and document digitization impediments.
• Monitored Agile metrics (velocity, cycle time, burndown) to forecast delivery timelines and optimize team throughput across trade finance modules.
• Coached teams on continuous improvement, domain-specific testing strategies (UAT, BDD), and automation readiness for trade operations.
• Supported stakeholder communication through structured sprint reports, risk logs, and compliance dashboards using Jira and Confluence.

Project: Lead Finance (Leading Finance Firm)

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Handled manual and automated testing using Selenium. Defined test strategies and executed comprehensive test cases.

Project: ACEBridge (Leading Insurance Firm).

Description: A digital insurance platform focused on policy lifecycle management, automated claims adjudication, and customer self-service portals. The system supported health, life, and general insurance products, integrating with third-party APIs for underwriting, premium calculation, and fraud detection.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Developed feature plans and execution documents along with defect reporting.
• Created a hybrid framework in Selenium for regression testing, and Cucumber for smoke testing.
• Prepared performance test scripts utilizing JMeter for load testing.
• Conducted API testing using Postman integrated with Newman for automation.
• Executed security testing with Burp Suite and the internal application check tool.
• Authored comprehensive test plans, strategies, and closure documentation.
• Managed team focused on manual, automation, API, and security testing efforts.

Project: Abbott(Leading Healthcare Firm)

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Executed functional and regression testing for enterprise applications to ensure quality standards.
• Utilized SOAPUI and Selenium WebDriver to develop comprehensive testing strategies.
• Performed a thorough analysis of application performance through automated testing tools.