Viktoriia Kholodenko
Verified Expert in Engineering
QA Engineer and Developer
Seattle, WA, United States
Toptal member since June 10, 2024
Viktoriia is an ISTQB-certified QA engineer with 12 years of experience testing APIs and web and mobile applications at HomeAway, InVision, and Tilly Therapy. She has managed QA teams of 10-15 engineers, including scope, schedule, and stakeholder management, while building QA processes using Agile methodologies. Viktoriia is proficient in defining and implementing test strategies, integrating QA into the software development lifecycle, and overseeing test planning and execution.
Portfolio
Experience
- Functional Testing - 12 years
- Test Design - 12 years
- Software QA - 12 years
- Jira - 12 years
- Requirements Analysis - 10 years
- Testing Strategy - 5 years
- Test Planning - 5 years
- E2E Testing - 5 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Git, Jira, TestRail, Notion, ChatGPT
The most amazing...
...accomplishment I've achieved is building a fully remote QA team from scratch for InVision, which led to a 40% increase in productivity within six months.
Work Experience
Senior QA Engineer
Elemy
- Developed and implemented a comprehensive test data framework with detailed guides that were adopted company-wide. This initiative reduced manual testing time by 25% across all phases and received positive feedback from team members.
- Participated in informal solution and design reviews, identifying 15% more issues and overlooked requirements early, improving project outcomes by 20%.
- Collaborated with product management to translate requirements into comprehensive test plans, ensuring thorough coverage and traceability.
- Introduced and managed the integration of acceptance criteria into user story templates, aligning development and QA teams and reducing the time for manual QA by 30%.
- Set quality exit criteria for releases, identifying high-priority bugs and postponing releases when needed. This reduced client-reported bugs by 20% and shortened the bug lifecycle from seven to two days.
- Reduced bug fix time by conducting thorough root cause analysis using Chrome DevTools, PostgreSQL, and GraphQL, enabling precise identification of issue sources.
- Facilitated testing integration by communicating with related teams and discussing change impacts.
- Led cross-team testing sessions for comprehensive coverage.
- Delivered functional testing and conducted thorough regression testing through end-to-end scenarios.
- Updated QA processes within the software development lifecycle, leading bi-weekly demos on product quality.
Lead QA Engineer
InVision
- Recruited, mentored, and managed a 10-person QA team, optimizing workloads to maximize efficiency and career growth through targeted development paths and skill assessments.
- Managed resource limits with optimal test strategies and quarterly plans focused on critical functions, improving processes, reducing bottlenecks, and creating a more efficient environment.
- Established a structured test management process using TestRail and Kanban methodologies in Jira, resulting in a 40% productivity increase within six months.
- Leveraged Jira and TestRail data to gather and analyze metrics, increasing testing transparency and reducing bugs in regression testing by 60% and post-production defects by 20%.
- Conducted knowledge-sharing sessions, implemented early functional testing, and planned regression testing. These efforts improved quality by 20% and reduced issue detection time by four days.
- Planned team loads and risks, reviewed testing strategies for seven teams, performed health checks, enforced metrics gathering, and conducted regular reviews.
- Implemented a fully remote QA team before COVID-19, using best communication and collaboration practices. I shared insights with other departments to enhance collaboration within distributed teams.
Senior QA Engineer
VRBO
- Collaborated with product management to convert requirements into detailed test plans, ensuring solid coverage and traceability.
- Designed and managed the entire testing process, including test planning, case development, execution, and comprehensive reporting using Zephyr.
- Migrated test cases from Rally to Zephyr, adjusting the testing process and workflow to align with the new tool.
- Prepared test data and performed manual functional testing, ensuring application functionalities met requirements.
- Reduced bug fix time by conducting root cause analysis using Splunk, Chrome DevTools, and MySQL to identify issues accurately.
- Communicated with related teams to integrate testing activities and discuss change impacts. I conducted cross-team testing sessions for efficient collaboration.
- Built new scripts for an automated API testing framework to cover new RESTful services.
- Refactored the test script base to optimize the existing automation framework and adopted new internal tools to improve integration with components developed by other teams.
- Established the company's performance testing process using JMeter. I enhanced reporting with BlazeMeter tools and developed scripts for performance, load, and stress testing, ensuring new services were thoroughly tested before production release.
QA Engineer
SoftServe
- Analyzed and clarified requirements to reduce requirement-related defects by 20%.
- Designed and executed test cases with 95% coverage for desktop and web applications.
- Performed manual testing and defect tracking, improving product stability by 30%.
- Coached junior QA team members, boosting team productivity and process efficiency.
Experience
Integration Tools for Vacation Rental Company
As the QA engineer in a small QA team, I provided test planning, design, and execution. I used functional testing for new features, regression testing for release candidates, and smoke testing for released versions in production. In addition, I provided defect reporting and verification, risk management, and coordination of integration testing with other teams.
Challenges:
• Establish QA processes from scratch.
• Mentor and formal lead for a team of two QA engineers.
Achievements:
• Switched from a classic test case description to a BDD approach, which increased the level of transparency between the engineering and Product teams. In addition, it helped speed up automation testing coverage of existing stable functionality.
• Successfully migrated test cases from Rally to Zephyr, adjusting the testing process and workflow to align with the new tool.
Consolidation Tool for VRBO
As the single QA engineer, I provided requirements analysis and clarification, test planning, design, execution, and bug management. I also have been preparing testing summary reports for the team and the product owner. In addition, I facilitated cross-team meetings focused on cross-team integration testing of related products.
Challenges:
• Prepare appropriate test data for accurate financial calculation testing.
• Align cross-team communication and collaboration.
Achievements:
• Prepared test data and performed manual functional testing, which improved defect detection efficiency by 25%.
• Reduced bug fix time by conducting root cause analysis using Splunk, Chrome DevTools, MySQL
3rd-party Integration Tool for VRBO clients
I supported the existing framework for API testing and created new scripts to cover new RESTful services using Java with Selenium. I also adopted the company performance testing process, including developing test scripts for performance, load, and stress testing. In addition, I partially acted as QA lead by collecting cross-team QA metrics, providing quality project health checks, and developing improvement plans.
Challenges:
• Switch from pure manual QA activities to API automation testing on Java.
• Adopt existing performance testing processes at the project.
Achievements:
• Refactored the test script base and adopted existing internal tools to optimize the existing automation framework.
• Established the company's performance testing process using JMeter-enhanced reporting by BlazeMeter to ensure new services are ready to release.
InVision Platform
As a QA lead, I recruited, mentored, and managed a 15-person QA team, optimizing workloads to maximize efficiency and career growth through targeted development paths and skill assessments. In parallel, I provided manual testing for the whole platform and the specific engineering team.
Challenges:
• Managing resource limitations by selecting an optimal test strategy, implementing quarterly test planning, and focusing on critical functionalities.
• performing planning activities for the whole QA team and managing the load of team members.
• Frequently adjusting the testing process according to company strategy and development changes.
Achievements:
• Established a structured test management process using TestRail and Kanban methodology in Jira, resulting in a 40% productivity increase within six months.
• Conducted knowledge-sharing sessions, implemented early functional testing, and planned regression testing with an impact matrix. These efforts improved quality by 20% and reduced issue detection time by four days.
Scheduling for Elemy
As a single senior QA engineer in command, I planned future testing, designed test plans, prepared test cases and test data, and provided functional and regression testing for scheduled releases. My responsibilities included defect reporting and verification, risk analysis, biweekly demos, and QA process optimization. I also participated in QA team initiatives to provide better quality for all Tilly products.
Challenges:
• Limited amount of test users with complex pre-setup process.
• High level of impact on other products.
• Frequently changing scope, priorities, and release schedule.
Achievements:
• Integrated QA processes within the SDLC, delivering test planning, execution, and reporting.
• Led biweekly demos on product quality, boosting team and stakeholder engagement.
• Designed a reusable test data framework with detailed guides, adopted by five teams, which reduced testing time by 25% across all phases in QA, Product, and development teams.
• Reduced bug fix time by conducting thorough root cause analysis.
Education
Master's Degree in Computer Science
State University of Trade and Economics - Chernivtsi, Ukraine
Certifications
Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL)
International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB)
Skills
Libraries/APIs
JDBC, Playwright
Tools
Jira, TestRail, Confluence, Zephyr, Git, Notion, ChatGPT, Trello, Rally, Apache JMeter, pgAdmin, BrowserStack, LaunchDarkly, Postman, Splunk, UnitTH, Figma, GitHub
Paradigms
Functional Testing, E2E Testing, Requirements Analysis, Non-functional Testing, Kanban, Scrum, DevOps, Page Object Model (POM), Stress Testing, Load Testing, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Test Automation, Manual Testing
Languages
SQL, Java, TypeScript, GraphQL, XML, JavaScript
Platforms
MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code)
Frameworks
Selenium, JUnit
Storage
Datadog, PostgreSQL, JSON
Other
Software QA, Regression Testing, Test Design, Test Planning, Testing Strategy, Reporting, InVision App, Test Case Execution, Reports, ISTQB, Quality Assurance (QA), QA Test Plan Management, Mobile App Testing, Metrics, XMind, Exploratory Testing, Staffing, Risk Management, Scope Management, API Testing, Performance Testing, Chrome DevTools, Compatibility Testing, QA Automation
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