Alex Mikitenko
QA Lead. Automation Architect. Ruby/JS Mentor.
- Ukraine, Kyiv, Shota Rustaveli str., 40
- +38 (066) 613-**-**
- nonkor@gmail.com
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:
[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.
Quick view on Ruby as a programming language and a little bit of metaprogramming.
Acceptance testing in Ruby based on cucumber + watir-webdriver technologies.
How to drive feature implementation with business scenarios
Russian: native
Ukrainian: native
English: advanced (C1)
Spain: beginner (A1)
Programming, video games, music, reading. Social initiatives, voluntary movements, anarchism.
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.