Alexander Tuaev
Quality Engineering Leader | Building QA Organizations | Release Management | AI-Powered Quality Systems | AI Evaluation
I build QA organizations from scratch and make releases predictable — two built from zero, the latest scaled from 2 to 18 engineers across 11 concurrent release streams. Lately I ship the tooling myself: two production AI applications for release orchestration and regression triage.
Download ResumeAbout Me
13+ years in SaaS quality engineering; 8+ years leading quality teams. I've built the QA function from scratch twice — at Fuel Cycle, then at Convoso, a cloud contact-center (CCaaS) platform, where I've been promoted three times in four years. I scaled QE capacity there from 2 to 18 engineers through a managed offshore-partner model — owning partner selection, engineering standards, work allocation, and performance management — while developing manual testers into SDETs and SDETs into leads.
Beyond the team, I own release management end to end across 11 concurrent streams — release calendar, dependency resolution, go/no-go governance, cross-team execution, and beta/post-release validation. I cut manual regression effort 70% by moving verification upstream into automated CI/CD gates instead of end-of-cycle inspection.
I build the tooling personally. I've shipped two production AI applications on Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK: an agentic release-orchestration platform and an AI regression-triage system that maps failures back to the changes that caused them and separates genuine defects from automation drift. Both run human-in-the-loop by design — AI drafts, analyzes, and recommends; engineers decide. No AI-proposed change reaches a suite without human review.
Experience
- Scaled QE capacity from 2 to 18 engineers through a managed offshore-partner model — partner selection, engineering standards, work allocation, and performance management, with a small core team in-house
- Own company-wide release management across 11 concurrent streams (5 major, 6 supporting): calendar, dependency resolution, go/no-go, and beta/post-release validation
- Cut manual regression effort 70% by moving verification upstream into automated QA gates in GitHub Actions; daily suites run with zero manual interaction
- Shipped an AI release-management platform (Python/FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Claude Agent SDK, React 19) integrating Jira, Confluence, and Google Calendar — scheduling, dependency gathering, risk analysis, readiness reporting, and QA KPIs
- Built an AI regression-analysis system that maps failures to the release changes that caused them, classifies genuine defects against automation drift, and recommends fixes for unstable suites (Cypress, TestRail, Atlassian)
- Set the operating standard for AI in quality: AI drafts, analyzes, and recommends — engineers decide; no AI-proposed change reaches a suite without human review
- Introduced Playwright as the E2E automation framework for a new product line (2025)
- Built a custom telephony verification app from scratch (Node.js, React; AWS EC2, Cognito, PostgreSQL, Redis) for automated call and SMS testing
- Deployed 24/7 application-health monitoring that surfaces infrastructure issues before customer impact
- Built the E2E and API test automation practice on Cypress and Postman; expanded automated coverage 50%
- Integrated automated test pipelines into CI/CD, enabling rapid scaling of offshore teams alongside company growth
- Partnered with engineering and DevOps to redesign the release process, improving reliability and compliance adherence
- Matured QA processes and release practices alongside rapid company growth
- Automated 99% of a technical-support engineer's recurring daily checks, freeing the equivalent of one full-time resource
- Founded the QA function from scratch: offshore hiring, QA process definition, and release management across multiple applications
- Built the original Cypress UI/API automation frameworks, cutting manual testing overhead 40%
- Established the QA function from the ground up while owning AWS infrastructure (VPC, IAM, EC2, RDS, CloudFront) with Terraform and Ansible
- Onboarded and maintained 120+ white-label client environments with automated testing and SOC 2 compliance — zero critical security breaches
- Built automation frameworks for web, mobile, and API testing (Selenium/TestNG, XCUITest, Espresso, Postman), improving testing efficiency 60%
- Directed release oversight and performance analytics with Splunk, New Relic, and CloudWatch
- Joined as the senior QA hire; defined initial QA processes — promoted to Lead within one year
- Owned QA for live video broadcasting platforms sustaining 99.9% uptime
- Automated regression with Selenium WebDriver/Java/TestNG; tested OTT apps on Roku, Amazon TV, and Chromecast
- Delivered QA for web and native mobile apps (Android/iOS); test plans and automation reduced escaped bugs 30%
Key Initiatives
- → Built company-wide QA & release process from scratch — release calendar, dependency resolution, go/no-go governance, and beta/post-release validation across 11 concurrent streams
- → Shipped an agentic release-orchestration platform on the Claude Agent SDK (Python/FastAPI + React) — scheduling, dependency gathering, risk analysis, readiness reporting
- → Shipped an AI regression-triage system — maps failures to the changes that caused them, separates genuine defects from automation drift, recommends fixes for unstable suites
- → Set the human-in-the-loop governance standard for AI in quality: AI drafts and recommends, engineers decide
- → Custom telephony test app (Node.js/React/AWS) — automated call & SMS verification
- → Automated QA gates in GitHub Actions; automated 99% of a support engineer's daily checks (1 FTE returned)
- → Test harnesses that de-risked major infrastructure migrations and enterprise telephony upgrades
- → Quality gates and audit evidence for SOC 2 and HIPAA environments
- → Redesigned defect escape metrics for leadership
Skills & Expertise
Leadership
- • Org Building — two QE functions from zero
- • Scaling via Managed Offshore Partners (2→18)
- • Release Management — 11 concurrent streams
- • Team Development: manual QA → SDET → lead
- • Quality Gates for SOC 2 & HIPAA
- • Cross-functional Alignment & Go/No-Go Governance
Automation
- • Playwright
- • Cypress.io
- • Selenium / TestNG
- • API Testing (Postman, RestAssured)
- • CI/CD Pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI)
Cloud & Infrastructure
- • AWS (EC2, VPC, IAM, RDS, CloudWatch, Cognito)
- • Terraform & Ansible — Infrastructure as Code
- • Docker & Kubernetes
- • PostgreSQL, Redis
- • Observability (Splunk, New Relic)
AI & Engineering
- • Claude Agent SDK — two production applications
- • LLM-assisted failure triage & defect-vs-drift classification
- • Human-in-the-loop AI governance
- • MCP tool integrations
- • Python (FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, pytest), Node.js, React
Let's Connect
Quality engineering leadership — building QA organizations, release systems, and AI-powered quality tooling.
Los Angeles · open to remote (US).