Papuna Gagnidze
Verified Expert in Engineering
QA Automation and DevOps Engineer and Developer
Tbilisi, Georgia
Toptal member since November 21, 2019
Papuna is a QA automation and DevOps engineer passionate about solving tech challenges. He became a CCNA at 16 and created the Georgian programming language "Ena" to help others learn. He also founded Loopback, an open-source tool for DevOps and automation. As a co-founder of GeoSTQB, he works to improve software testing standards in Georgia. Papuna enjoys building high-quality tests and scalable systems and fostering a positive team environment.
Portfolio
Experience
- Linux - 10 years
- DevOps - 7 years
- JavaScript - 6 years
- QA Automation - 6 years
- Docker - 5 years
- Bash - 5 years
- Network Engineering - 3 years
- Java - 2 years
Preferred Environment
Docker, Git, Unix, Fedora, Amazon Web Services (AWS), JavaScript, Lua, Go, Kubernetes, Firebase
The most amazing...
...project I've created is Ena, a Georgian programming language. Mentored by Lua creator Roberto Ierusalimschy, I learned to design programming languages.
Work Experience
DevOps Engineer
Anova Sports
- Designed and built the AWS infrastructure for a GPU-backed ML inference pipeline from scratch, retiring a legacy Terraform monolith for a modular Terragrunt setup.
- Parallelized video segment inference across threads with shared model loading on a single GPU, delivering a 1.7x speedup per job.
- Rolled out Spot GPU on AWS Batch with SIGTERM-aware shutdown and Batch retry, cutting per-job GPU cost 60% with no dropped runs.
DevOps Engineer
Cleardoc Inc.
- Achieved 25% overall cost savings and 75% S3 cost reduction by analyzing access patterns, implementing lifecycle policies, and auto-scaling for video transcoders.
- Enhanced database security and management using advanced measures through AWS CDK, improving data protection and simplifying migrations.
- Streamlined AWS resource management and improved disaster recovery by migrating the webinar application infrastructure to IaC.
Co-founder
GeoSTQB
- Participated in conferences, cooperating with the industry’s financial sector and public institutions.
- Administered accreditation of training providers to supply courses that meet the syllabi of ISTQB.
- Certified over 100 IT professionals in Georgia according to ISTQB standards within the first two years.
DevOps Engineer
Klipy
- Architected multi-region infrastructure serving billions of API requests, achieving 95% latency reduction and 20x performance improvements across APAC, European, and American markets.
- Established monitoring and observability framework with ECS monitoring, composite CloudWatch alarms, and cross-region Slack notifications, improving incident response and reducing operational overhead.
- Implemented Infrastructure as Code using AWS CDK with TypeScript, enabling parallel multi-region deployments and reducing region expansion from engineering projects to configuration changes.
AI Developer
OctoML, Inc.
- Developed and integrated a custom endpoint with the front-end project to verify and improve platform functionality.
- Conducted usability tests and provided feedback, significantly improving clarity around public access and health checks.
- Identified critical bugs and issues with endpoint management, leading to important system fixes.
QA Screener
Toptal
- Conducted over 170 interviews for manual and automation QA engineers.
- Contributed to developing interview techniques that enhanced the quality of candidate selection for QA roles.
- Helped design and implement technical assessments for QA candidates, including live coding tasks and technical projects.
QA Engineer
Cleardoc Inc.
- Automated smoke testing for a real-time remote video creation application using a hybrid Cypress, Puppeteer, and FFmpeg framework.
- Created load tests using k6 for critical WebSockets and executed them from k6 cloud load generators.
- Trained team members in testing methodologies and testing principles.
QA Engineer
Casting Networks
- Managed a team of five senior QA automation engineers.
- Maintained UI, API, Load, and Database testing frameworks for a large-scale application with 3 million users.
- Implemented optimized tests for validating large datasets up to 4 million records.
Mobile Automation Engineer
Switch Four
- Analyzed business and functional requirements and developed test scripts for iOS and Android Native applications. Automated test coverage of the core functionality increased by 75%.
- Implemented a simplified flow for the application version management by integrating a framework with the Bitrise API.
- Set up a CI/CD pipeline on a TeamCity server with parametrization to run tests using specific builds on Sauce Labs cloud devices. Built reporting with Allure reporter and integrated results with TeamCity.
QA Engineer
TBC Bank Group
- Managed a team of QA engineers (ten testers) as a chapter lead.
- Created JMeter scenarios and scheduled the virtual users to generate a realistic load on the server.
- Developed UI and API automation scripts using Selenium WebDriver, Java, JUnit, and SoapUI.
QA Engineer
Product Savvy Consulting
- Led a project team for developing highly available event management software.
- Designed and implemented a scalable system using Dockerized microservices on AWS ECS.
- Set up Jenkins for continuous delivery, including automated builds, E2E testing, and multi-environment deployments.
Experience
Anova Sports
https://www.anovasports.com/Klipy
OpenReel
https://openreel.comCasting Networks
T-Pay
https://tpay.ge/TBC Web
https://www.tbcbank.ge/web/en/personal-bankingTBC Mobile
https://www.tbcbank.ge/web/en/web/guest/mobile-banking-for-iphoneParkMyCloud
Speaker at EXTENT Talks
https://extent.exactpro.com/extent-talks/extent-talks-20-april-2019Speaker at DevOps Con Tbilisi
Panel Discussions at TMPA Conference
Panel Discussions at the A4Q World Congress
https://a4qtestingsummit.com/a4q-world-congress-2021-edition-1/Browserbird
Ena
https://ena-lang.org/AI Printed Art
https://youtube.com/shorts/dmbboR47-c4Education
Coursework Toward a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics
Tbilisi State University - Tbilisi, Georgia
Certifications
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
Amazon Web Services
Cisco Certified Network Professional
Cisco
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, WebDriverJS, Chai, React, Playwright, REST APIs, Puppeteer, Shopify API
Tools
Cucumber, AWS CloudFormation, Jenkins, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), GitHub, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Jira, REST Assured, Mocha, Apache JMeter, Git, Gradle, Postman, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon CloudFront CDN, GitLab CI/CD, AWS IAM, AWS Deployment, Bitbucket, AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeBuild, TestRail, Nagios, Cacti, WebdriverIO, TeamCity, Grafana, Kibana, Ansible, Vagrant, SoapUI, Grafana k6, Google Workspace, Terraform, BrowserStack
Languages
SQL, JavaScript, Gherkin, TypeScript, Python, Bash, Lua, Java, Go
Frameworks
Appium, Selenium, Selenide, Jest, JUnit, Next.js, Cypress, Angular, NestJS, Svelte
Paradigms
Manual Testing, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Automated Testing, DevOps, Testing, Test Automation, E2E Testing, DevSecOps, Scrum, Functional Testing, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Agile Software Development, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Load Testing, Microservices Architecture, Test-driven Development (TDD), Automation, Stress Testing, REST, Software Testing, Serverless Architecture
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon EC2, Docker, Linux, AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, Unix, Fedora, MacOS, Firebase, iOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code)
Storage
MySQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), PostgreSQL, Database Testing, Amazon Aurora, Redis, MongoDB, Microsoft SQL Server, Databases, Elasticsearch, Amazon DynamoDB
Industry Expertise
Banking & Finance
Other
Mobile App Testing, Web App Testing, SDET, Manual QA, QA Testing, AWS DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Cloud Architecture, Quality Assurance (QA), Agile Software Testing, UI Testing, API Testing, Network Engineering, QA Automation, CI/CD Pipelines, Cloud Services, Automated UI Testing, SDKs, Quality Control (QC), Quality Auditing, Programming, Manual Software Testing, Test Planning, Smoke Testing, Test Automation Frameworks, Test Cases, Website QA, Architecture, AWS ECS Fargate, Regression Testing, Integration Testing, Monitoring, AWS Cloud Architecture, QA Leadership, IT Security, Test Design, Configuration Management, Performance Testing, Linux Server Administration, Amazon RDS, API Gateways, Artificial Intelligence (AI), APIs, Release Management, Disaster Recovery Consulting, Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP), Accessibility Testing, BitBucket Pipelines, AI Automation, Agentic AI, Rideshare Services, Event Management, Routing, IT Networking, System Administration, Linear Algebra, Calculus, Networking, Cisco, Cisco Networking, Troubleshooting, Prometheus, Filebeat, Test Management, ECS, Security, Website Performance, Performance Tuning, Interviewing, Documentation, Conference Speaking, Public Speaking, Project Leadership, Mobile Device QA Automation, Web App Automation, Mentorship & Coaching, AIOps, Computer Networking, DNS, Infrastructure Security, LAN, WAN, Quality of Service (QoS), WLAN, Cloud Security, Observability, Machine Learning, GPU Computing, Sports, Analytics
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