Advising various startups on technical and operational aspects.

As an Executive Director, Test Engineering, my responsibilities include Quality of SonicWall’s ZTNA/SASE, EDR/NGAV (Capture Client), SSL/TLS VPNs and Mobility (SMA 1000, 100), and WAF products. Have helped out in IPSec VPN, penetration testing, wireless security (SonicPoint) and E-mail security. Recently, overseeing on-prem and cloud-based lab functions, including purchase, support, IT lifecycle, cost optimization etc.My job functions include definition and operationalization of various SMART KPIs of Quality, de-risking of Quality and schedule, testing for military certifications like FIPS, Common Criteria and UCAPL. Earlier I achieved test economization through test database optimization, spearheading test primitive based automation, bug reproducibility innovations and combinatorial testing in achieving semi-automation tools and meta-automation frameworks. Achieved 50% reduction in number of test cases and 70% reduction in testing time.Delivered 5 new products and 3 legacy product lines. Retained a spotless record of delivery within schedule, budget and Quality. The biggest pride for me is how SonicWall VPN product lines withstood the pandemic related WFH boom with zero Quality escalation.On people management front, turned around performance of a team, built 6 teams, created a formidable talent funnel for SonicWall through university relations and establishing a “v1.0” culture in teams reporting to me, championing in delivery in risky and unstructured environment. Recently, I have saved $1.5M/year money through cloud optimization, controlling VM sprawl, local server consolidation and contract negotiations.Learned "Goldilock's management" not too micro-managing, not too hands-off - just right.

As a QA/Program manager, my responsibilities as a Program/QA manager included testing delivery and lab handling of Nortel load balancers (Nortel Application Switch) and EMS (Nortel EMS)My job function involved building a team from scratch, P&L and training the team on L4-L7 networking, Local and Global Load balancing, FCAPS; new feature and regression functional testing, system testing for performance and stability etc. using IXIA and Python.Improved customer engagement through constant communication and satisfaction by not missing a deadline in any release of any product. Succeeded in taking over the project from a Vietnam based teamLearnt project and program management skills and good SW Engineering practices of Nortel from my first QA management experience

As a part of acquisition of Riverstone Networks by Lucent Technologies.Started a project to make erstwhile Riverstone products and processes compliant to TL-9000, ISO-9000.

Phase 2: Management phaseAs the manager for internal software group, my responsibilities included conceptualization, design and delivery of test tracking system and asset management system as well as maintenance of test automation frameworkMy job functions included building up a team, internal customer interviews, requirement gathering, design, product quality, internal customer support and project managementDelivered reliable, functional key software using Extreme Programming (XP) for software engineering process which continued to run for many years after my exit. Also, the extreme bug free nature of development enhanced my confidence in “decision-free programming” technique because the code had less than 7.5 decisions/kloc. I have captured this technique in my blog.Learnt to commit and deliverPhase 1: Technical leader phaseAs the team lead for test automation, my responsibilities included testing multi-layer switch router, development of tools and techniques for test automation and development of a test frameworkIt was a true-blue startup experience that required a lot of initiatives, working with overseas contractors, including coming up with a low-code test domain programming language zlang, an approach of carrying out test coverage analysis without stopping programs, working with graph algorithms, converting a massive spaghetti codebase to a proper OOP code, tool chain merger because of M&A. It gave me opportunity to interact with authors of languages and famous toolsLearnt Ixia, Tcl/Expect/STOOP/Tk, Smartbits, Perl, ANVL, gprof, gcov, Coverity, C (gcc, gdb), sed, awk, shell programming, L2-L3 Unicast and Multicast routing and bridging protocols (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PIM, IGMP, STP, RSTP, PVST, MVST), L4-L7 Load-balancing L4-L7, NAT, Web-cache, Source and Policy Based Routing, SNMP, SSHv1 and v2, Coverity, Splint

Worked on Symbol tables, RPC marshalling and internals, Compiler-Debugger communication, MIPS emulation, gcc, gdb, byte-order complexity of >16 bit wide data types

Worked on C++, 65C02 - 8 bit microprocessor, Digital Storage Oscilloscopes, Shlaer-Miller OOA - from testing angleThis contract made me appreciate the importance of testing (and seriousness of not testing), importance and rigorous process of third party audits, especially FDA

Worked on a trap based real time kernel, stack rearrangement, file system, kernel debugger, MIPS 32-bit assembly language, API, ABI, Position Independent Code and Data (PIC, PID)

Worked on pSOS+ RTOS, BSP, BIOS, POST, C, TCP/IP, HDLC, device drivers for flash, radio, UART, RTC, display; Motorola 68302 microcontroller and assembly language, embedded product design GPS and GIS, digital hardware design, EMI reduction, heat shielding, SPICE, Digital Storage Oscilloscope, VHF Radio survey

Analog and power electronics design for UPS and motor drives using SPICE, DSOs