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Overview

QA Lead. Automation Architect. Ruby/JS Mentor. SDET.

Rate: $40 per hour.

I am a QA Automation Architect with 10+ years of experience delivering high-quality software solutions by building robust test frameworks and enabling development teams to achieve consistent, tested, and reliable code. I have worked with top-tier companies like Toptal, Upwork, and Sendcloud, where I played a key role in ensuring product quality, introducing CI/CD-integrated automation frameworks, and mentoring engineers.

Key Expertise:

[QA Automation] I excel at designing and implementing automation frameworks from scratch to address unique project requirements. My skills span multiple testing areas:

  • End-to-End Testing: Proficient in Ruby (Webdriver, Cucumber; metaprogramming and DSL development), JavaScript/TypeScript (Cypress, Playwright, TestCafe, Protractor, ES6), and Python (Behave).
  • Service Testing: Skilled in API testing with Postman, custom API frameworks, and contract testing using Pact.
  • Unit Testing: Experienced with RSpec, Jest, Mocha, and Pytest for unit-level validations.

[Mentorship] Sharing knowledge is my passion. I have mentored and trained multiple groups of engineers, focusing on Ruby/JS page-object models, test automation principles, and advanced testing techniques.

[Team & Leadership] I specialize in building and nurturing engineering teams, fostering collaborative, horizontally-managed environments that encourage innovation, ownership, and inclusivity. I strongly believe that QA is an engineering function, not a standalone role.

My Values & Philosophy:

As an anarchist and activist, I am committed to building ethical and useful products that positively impact society. I advocate for equality, equity, and flat team structures, ensuring these principles are embedded in every organization I work with.

Beyond my professional work, I have extensive volunteering experience, contributing to initiatives aligned with my vision of a fairer, more compassionate world. I strive to use my skills to support organizations and causes that make a difference while avoiding industries like gambling, advertising, and others that conflict with my principles.

Beyond QA:

In my free time, I enjoy playing video games, organizing cinema clubs, traveling, and participating in activist initiatives. These experiences fuel my creativity and strengthen my commitment to building better systems and teams.

Work experience

Mar 2022current

Lead QA Engineer

Sendcloud

Description: Dutch e-commerce shipping platform

Responsibilities:

  • Architecture redesign for existing E2E test framework: moving from plain UI validations to behavior-driven model (Page objects, non-UI data preparation etc)
  • Writing and maintaining UI tests (Cypress/Playwright), API tests (Cypress/Postman), unit tests (pytest, jest)
  • Investigating contract testing (pactflow)
  • Manual testing by demand
  • Screening and interviewing QA candidates during hiring process

Technologies:

  • JS (Cypress, Playwright, Jest)
  • Python (pytest)
  • Postman
  • Gitlab CI
  • Docker
Sep 2020Mar 2022

QA team lead

Farmdrop

Description: An online grocer with a focus on food sourced from local farmers, fishermen and other producers. The company now provides farm-to-table foods and fresh fish for consumers in the London area, along with ethically-sourced baby & kids, household and deli products.

Responsibilities:

  • Teams restructure: leading a process of incorporation QAs into development teams
  • Building QA guild from scratch (4 people). Leadership for QA guild connected around best practices and frameworks
  • Establishing proper agile processes: grooming sessions, context-related sync-ups, tech demos
  • Reducing end-to-end automated test flakiness to zero
  • Creating virtual QA knowledge library
  • Mentorship inside the team and for other N-ix contractors 

Technologies:

  • Ruby+Appium (Cucumber, Rspec, Webdriver)
  • Python
  • JS (Cypress)
  • GraphQL
  • Jenkins
2019Sep 2020

Lead QA Automation Engineer

Farmdrop

Description: An online grocer with a focus on food sourced from local farmers, fishermen and other producers. The company now provides farm-to-table foods and fresh fish for consumers in the London area, along with ethically-sourced baby & kids, household and deli products.

Responsibilities:

  • Cross-platform end-to-end testing: cucumber + capybara + appium
  • Api testing: rspec + airborne
      Aug 2020Dec 2020

      Freelance QA Engineer

      Mechanism Ventures (QUBL project)

      Description: Online-platform specializes on creating customizable quizzes and surveys based on user needs 

      Responsibilities:

      • Writing and maintaining end-to-end tests for quiz constructor

      Technologies:

      • TestCafe (JavaScript)
      20182019

      Lead QA Automation Engineer

      Toptal

      Responsibilities:

      • Analyze of business expectations
      • Transforming business requirements into user stories and cucumber scenarios
      • Provide a quality expertise for newcoming features
      • Designing and maintaining of business test framework

      Technologies:

      • Ruby stack: Ruby on Rails, Rspec, Cucumber, Watir, Webdriver, FactoryBot, VCR.
      • DB: Postgress.
      • CI: Jenkins
      • Other: JIRA
          2018

          QA Automation Architect

          Couchsurfing
          • development of an end-to-end test framework for Couchsurfing web app;
          • training QA Engineers, conducting lessons about Automation and Ruby;
          20172018

          QA Automation Architect

          Dinghy (via Upwork)
          • development of an end-to-end test framework for getdinghy web app;
          2017

          Lead Automation Engineer

          Tech Team Labs | KEYPR

          Responsibilities:

          • build and maintain a cross-platformed end-to-end test framework for KEYPR mobile apps from the scratch;
          • maintain and extend custom API test framework to cover the core of KEYPR microservices system.

          Technologies:

          • Ruby stack: Cucumber, Watir, Webdriver, Calabash, Appium, Fastline
          • Java stack: Java, Groovy
          • CI: Jenkins
          • Other: JSON API
          20162017

          Lead Automation QA Engineer

          AgileEngine | CourseMaven project

          Responsibilities:

          • build and maintain js end-to-end test environment based on Protractor framework in Angular app;
          • build and maintain ruby api test environment based on Rack::Test framework in Rails app;
          • set up Travis CI service for testing and tracking rubocop offenses;
          • manage test data by Fabrication objects;
          • update workflow model (simplify gitflow process, enable protected brunches and CI builds, initiate Agile practices such a retros, plannings and so on);
          • fix bugs in Rails app.

          Technologies:

          • Ruby stack: Ruby on Rails, Grape, Fabrication, Rspec, Rack::Test.
          • JS stack: Protractor, Node, ES2016.
          • DB: Postgress.
          • CI: Travis.
          20142016

          Senior QA Automation Engineer

          Toptal

          Responsibilities:

          Performing test automation utilizing testing tools such as cucumber, rspec, watir-selenium-webdriver, watirsome in top-professional and effective Scrum/Kanban team.

          Implementation of a complex fabrication system for end-to-end testing to reflect the way of app data creation as sequences of user actions in real app.

          Technologies:

          • Ruby stack: Ruby on Rails, FactoryGirl, Rspec, Cucumber, Watir, Webdriver, VCR.
          • DB: Postgress.
          • CI: Jenkins.
          20132014

          QA engineer / Automated test developer

          Adyax

          Responsibilities: Development of the autotesting framework based on ruby, watir and cucumber technologies. Writing and maintaining test scripts for checking adyax websites.

          Technologies: Ruby, Cucumber, Watir, Webdriver.

          20082013

          QA engineer / Automated test developer

          Upwork (former oDesk)

          Responsibilities:

          • Writing scripts for autotesting
          • Maintenance of autotests
          • Regression and functional testing.

          Technologies: TestComplate (2008-2011), ruby+webdriver (2011-2013)

          20072008

          Software developer / Tech Support / Executive

          PrivatBank

          Responsibilities:

          • Customer requests analysis, software architecture reviewing, software development, database reconstructing.
          • Processing support requests for problems, assistance in resolving issues.
          • Maintaining cash terminals.

           

          Lecture «Ruby in general» (russian)

          Quick view on Ruby as a programming language and a little bit of metaprogramming.

          Lecture «Automation Testing in Ruby» (russian)

          Acceptance testing in Ruby based on cucumber + watir-webdriver technologies.

          Lecture «Being ahead business with cucumber» (english)

          How to drive feature implementation with business scenarios

          My courses

          Education

          20022007

          Software Engineering

          Zhytomyr State Technological University (ZSTU)

          Master's Thesis: Software complex “Center of sociological researches”
          Department: Information and Computer Technologies
          Area of study: math, programming, micro-processing systems

          Languages

          Russian: native
          Ukrainian: native
          English: advanced (C1)
          Spain: beginner (A1)

          Interests

          Programming, video games, music, reading. Social initiatives, voluntary movements, anarchism.

          Testimonials (newest to oldest)

          Mikhail Bortnyk | Ruby Development Team Lead:

          I was a development leader on the project, where Alex was a QA lead. He re-created the QA department from scratch and did it perfectly! The collaboration with him and his team was always smooth and resultative. Together, we launched several significant features and prevented some big issues. I highly recommend Alex if you need to fix broken QA processes or build a brand new QA team that perfectly suits your business.

          Alex Rodionov | QA Automation Architect at Toptal:

          Alex is an amazing QA engineer to work with and I enjoyed all our collaboration during the years of working side-by-side in a single group and in different teams later. He's diligent when it comes to planned work and creative when facing unforeseen obstacles. He's a great team player as he is capable of working beyond QA engineer responsibilities, proactively taking care of developer tasks like small improvements and bug fixes. Alex is a person who can build the whole QA from scratch in a new company as he knows the strategies and theory behind software development and testing. He's also a valuable addition to any existing team as he spots problems that lead to worse quality and knows how to address them.

          Edward Woodcock | Founder of Dinghy:

          Really great to work with. Brought lots of good ideas to the team and a lot of expertise which was executed very well. Lots of communication about work to date and intentions. Would happily hire again.

          Andrew Emelianenko | Product Architect at Dinghy:

          I was absolutely happy to work with Alex. I worked with himbefore. So when we opened the Lead QA Automation position,Alex was the first person in my list. He is a professional of thehighest class, me and team were absolutely satisfied with his job.I hope we'll work together again in the future.

          Anton Uhlenko | Release Manager at BETLAB:

          The Dynamic Ruby course, delivered by Alexander, proved to be very useful for me. Alexander is a good professional and excellent teacher. The material was given gradually and with a lot of examples, that made it comprehensible and enabled me to memorize and learn it well.

          Kate Batsenko | Head of Education at GoIT:

          In summer 2015 Alex has delivered series of Master Classes & Workshops dedicated to Ruby for GoIT students and alumni. He composed it of two parts - "Ruby in general" (providing a broad view of Ruby as a programming language, with very useful practical examples and metaprogramming) and "Automation Testing in Ruby" (using cucumber + watir-webdriver technologies). The students and alumni, who are developers and QA engineers as well, and are interested in studying Ruby for automation, enjoyed these workshops very much. They especially noted the intense material and its applicability, and Alex's undoubted talent of a teacher / speaker. Thanks again and hope for further co-operation!

          Arkadiy Zabazhanov | Senior RoR developer at Toptal:

          Alex is an outstanding engineer and QA. It seems like he got a sixth sense on bugs and blind spots revealing. Along with a great personality, he is proactive and passionate QA.

          Konstantin Govorukha | QA Automation Team Lead at Adyax:

          Alex has a good experience in automated testing. He is a well productive person. During my work with Alex I noted often he worked faster than me and I could assign to him tasks which should be done in short time period. Also he learned new knowledge pretty quickly so it was not a problem to give absolutely new unknown task to Alex. I think Alex is a person who will learn new technologies during all the time. I was glad to work with Alex and I recomend him to other people.

          Volodymyr Tereshchuk | QA Automation Team Lead at oDesk:

          Oleksander has strong intelligence and analytical mind; accurate, has ability to see problems commonly and in context; good team player; quick learner; pretty initiative; can handle heavy/complex tasks. Writes good-quality and well-commented code.

          Feedback from peers:

          Feature testers mention Oleksander as accurate AT engineer who is able to find and bring up many inconsistencies missed by PMs, PAs, developers and manual QAs.
          Oleksander is very responsible person, he always comes up with ideas of how to make automation more efficient. He did a great job in creation mobile test suites from scratch and explored the specific of mobile testing.
          Coworkers mentioned him as pretty good learner; good teamwork; pretty productive as coder.

          David Ramer | QA Manager at oDesk:

          Oleksander Mikitenko, was an excellent automation person for oDesk. He completed tasks on time and with high quality.