10 years experience:
- Cypress, Playwright, TestCafe, Jest, Mocha
- Strong ES6+, async/await, promises
- Node.js for test tooling
QA Manager / Automation Architect. Mentor. Software Development Engineer in Test.
Oleksandr Mykytenko
Esse quam videri
Overview
Senior QA Automation Architect with 15+ years of experience building robust test frameworks and enabling high-quality software delivery. Proven track record with companies like Toptal, Upwork, Sendcloud, and N-ix.
Core Expertise:
- Test Automation: Expert in designing and implementing automation frameworks from scratch for diverse domains including e-commerce (Sendcloud), food-tech (Farmdrop), and climate tech (Earthbanc). Proficient in Ruby (Cucumber, RSpec, Webdriver), JavaScript/TypeScript (Cypress, Playwright, TestCafe), and Python (Behave, PyTest).
- API & Contract Testing: Skilled in Postman, custom API frameworks, and contract testing using Pact. Experience with REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and SOAP protocols.
- Mobile Testing: Cross-platform mobile automation experience with Appium and Calabash for native, hybrid, and mobile web applications.
- CI/CD & Cloud Integration: Experienced with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Docker, and Kubernetes. Implemented cloud-based test execution pipelines for scalable automation.
- Team Leadership & Consulting: Built QA teams from scratch, mentored engineers, and provided consulting on test strategy and automation best practices across organizations.
Technical Approach:
I strongly believe QA is an engineering function. My work focuses on shifting testing left, reducing flakiness to zero, and enabling teams to deliver with confidence through behavior-driven development, test pyramid principles, and comprehensive CI/CD-integrated automation strategies.
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
Work experience
Mar 2025current
QA Architect
Faster Than Light | Earthbanc
Description: Climate-focused technology platform enabling resilient systems for carbon removal, nature-based assets, and sustainable supply chains. The Earthbanc OS provides web and mobile applications for managing environmental data, AI-driven analytics, and green infrastructure scaling.
Responsibilities:
- Leading QA strategy and test automation for web and mobile applications serving forest management, agriculture, and carbon removal sectors
- Designing and implementing comprehensive test automation frameworks (UI, API, integration) from scratch
- Establishing quality standards and test documentation for complex data-driven environmental monitoring systems
- Collaborating with data scientists, GIS specialists, and forward-deployed engineers to ensure data integrity and system reliability
- Building QA processes for handling disparate environmental datasets and AI model validation
Technologies:
- JavaScript/TypeScript (Playwright)
- API Testing (Postman, REST)
- CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
- Test Data Management (Testiny)
Jun 2024Mar 2025
Independent QA Consultant / Professional Development
- Part-time QA mentoring at Hillel IT School (Jan 2025 onwards)
- Advanced training in modern test infrastructure
- Contributing to QA automation best practices and knowledge sharing
- Evaluating opportunities in sustainable technology sector
Technologies: Playwright, Cypress, Python (pytest), Postman, GitHub Actions, Docker
Mar 2022Jun 2024
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 2019Mar 2022
QA Team Lead (promoted Sep 2020)
N-ix | 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.
QA Team Lead (Sep 2020 - Mar 2022)
- Built QA guild from scratch (4 engineers)
- Led teams restructure process
- Reduced E2E test flakiness from 15% to 0%
- Decreased test execution time by 40%
Lead QA Automation Engineer (Sep 2019 - Sep 2020)
- Cross-platform end-to-end testing (cucumber + capybara + appium)
- API testing (rspec + airborne)
- Foundation for promotion: established automation frameworks and
best practices
Promoted after a year for successfully building QA automation
infrastructure from scratch.
Technologies: Ruby+Appium, Python, Cypress, GraphQL, Jenkins
20142019
Senior/Lead QA Automation Engineer
Toptal & Contract Projects
Responsibilities:
Primary role at Toptal with additional contract engagements for KEYPR (Hotel management platform) and CourseMaven (US college selection platform).
- Analyzing business requirements for platform features and translating them into testable user stories and Cucumber scenarios
- Designing and maintaining business test automation framework for Toptal's marketplace (talent vetting, job matching, payments)
- Providing quality expertise and consultation for new feature development
- Leading quality initiatives and establishing best practices across engineering teams
- Mentoring team members on test automation approaches, BDD methodology, and quality culture
- Contributing to technical discussions on platform architecture and quality strategy
Key achievements:
- Implemented complex fabrication system for end-to-end testing
- Built cross-platform mobile automation frameworks from scratch
- Established BDD practices with Cucumber across multiple projects
Technologies:
- Ruby stack: Ruby on Rails, FactoryGirl, Rspec, Cucumber, Watir, Webdriver, VCR.
- DB: Postgress.
- CI: Jenkins.
20082013
QA Engineer / SDET
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
PrivatBank
Responsibilities:
- Customer requests analysis, software architecture reviewing, software development, database reconstructing.
- Processing support requests for problems, assistance in resolving issues.
- Maintaining cash terminals.
MeNtorship
Jan 2025May 2025
Pro QA
Hillel IT school
Provided mentorship and guidance to QA students throughout the PRO QA course, focusing on industry best practices and comprehensive quality assurance standards. Delivered hands-on training and expertise in tools and technologies such as:
- Git, Subversion
- JavaScript, TypeScript
- REST, gRPC, GraphQL, SOAP
- Postman, JMeter
- MongoDB, PostgreSQL
- Docker, Kubernetes
- Jenkins
2021
Cypress. From MQA to AQA
N-ix
Build end-to-end test automation using Cypress
- Lesson 1: Test pyramid. Three amigos in agile
- Lesson 2: User stories. Business scenarios. Gherkin syntax
- Lesson 3: Cypress. Basics
- Lesson 4: OOP in JavaScript
- Lesson 5: Page Object pattern. Cucumber in Cypress
- Lesson 6: Mastering cypress
- Lesson 7: Http requests
- Lesson 8: Git advanced
- Lesson 9: Cypress locator strategies
2018
QA Automation in BDD
Couchsurfing
How to build a proper business test framework in Ruby
2016
Dynamic Ruby
Betlab
How to build a proper business test framework in Ruby
Lecture «Being ahead business with cucumber» (english)
How to drive feature implementation with business scenarios
Lecture «Automation Testing in Ruby» (russian)
Acceptance testing in Ruby based on cucumber + watir-webdriver technologies.
Lecture «Ruby in general» (russian)
Quick view on Ruby as a programming language and a little bit of metaprogramming.
Testimonials
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 imasset-portfolio-0provements 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.
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!