STARWEST 2021 - Conference Speakers | TechWell

Conference archive

Conference Speakers

Jason_Arbon
Chief Technology Officer
test.ai

Jason Arbon is the CTO at test.ai where his mission is to test all the worlds apps. Google’s AI investment arm lead test.ai’s latest funding round. Jason previously worked on several large-scale products: web search at Google and Bing, the web browsers Chrome and Internet Explorer,...Read more

Adam_Auerbach
VP of Cloud and DevTestSecOps
EPAM Systems

Adam Auerbach is the Vice President of Cloud and DevTestSecOps at EPAM Systems, a leading global provider of digital platform engineering and software development services. Before joining Epam, Adam served as the VP of Quality and DevOps Engineering at Lincoln Financial Group where Adam was responsible introducing and leading the...Read more

Lee Barnes
CTO
Utopia Solutions

Concurrent Sessions

Lee Barnes has over 25 years of experience in the Software Quality Assurance and Testing field. He has been involved in the implementation of test automation and performance testing solutions in hundreds of environments across a wide array of industries. Most recently, Lee has been involved with bringing quality practices...Read more

Melissa Benua
Director of Engineering
mParticle

Melissa Benua has worked in nearly every software development role—dev, test, DevOps, and program management—at companies big and small and somewhere in-between. She's created and run high availability, high-quality services for PlayFab, Bing, Cortana, and Xbox One, and now for mParticle's enormous data platform. Melissa discovered her love of massively-scaled...Read more

Daniel-Billing
Senior Software Engineer
Microsoft
Daniel Billing is a software test engineer of 20 years, having previously been an independent consultant. He is now a test lead on a variety of projects in the 5G, Azure, and Edge Computing space at Microsoft, where he drives change, lead, and coach in quality and testing. He loves
...Read more
Bjorn-Boisschot
Solution Architect
CTG

Concurrent Sessions

Bjorn Boisschot is an IT professional with more than 15 years’ experience in quality assurance and how this fits into the software development cycle. Next to being a consultant he is also a DevOps coach and trainer for different customers. One of his personal objectives is to bring joy to...Read more

Christoph-Börner
CEO and Co-Founder
Botium GmbH

Christoph Börner is an entrepreneur, developer, tester, keynote speaker and drummer. Studied information technology at the Technical University of Vienna and worked in various fields of software engineering. Active member and organizer in the Austrian testing community. Deep interest in artificial intelligence, machine learning and bots from day one. Long...Read more

Jenny Bramble
Director of Quality Engineering
Papa

Jenny Bramble came up through support and DevOps, cutting her teeth on that interesting role that acts as the 'translator' between customer requests from support and the development team before diving headlong into her career as a tester. Her love of support and the human side of problems lets her...Read more

JanJapp-Cannegieter
Principal Consultant
Squerist

Concurrent Sessions

Jan Jaap Cannegieter has 25 years of experience in ICT, he did assignments in requirements, testing, quality assurance, process improvement, Agile and digitalization. Jan Jaap is Principal Consultant at Squerist, a consultancy company of 100 employees specialized in process management and testing. Within Squerist Jan Jaap is responsible for coaching, knowledge management and product development. Jan Jaap is...Read more

Jenna Charlton
Senior Consultant
Coveros

Jenna Charlton has been a software tester for nearly a decade. In that time she’s focused on manual testing, taking a particular interest in web accessibility and usability. Jenna’s experience in testing runs the gamut from lone tester on a Scrum team to test lead on an enterprise-level project. Jenna’s...Read more

Erika Chestnut
Head of QA
Calendly

Fun. Quirky. Clever. Sassy. Erika Chestnut’s leadership style begins and ends with relationships. With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry - from application development to spinning up new quality departments - Erika has learned to lead with grace, patience and a little bit of snarky humor. She...Read more

Kaushal_Dalvi
UKG

Since he got his first computer at age thirteen, Kaushal Dalvi has been interested in systems and software performance. He spent days researching performance characteristics of different motherboards, CPUs, GPUs, RAM, and disks to configure and overclock them in order to squeeze the maximum frames per second out of the...Read more

Adrian Dunston
Director of Backend Engineering
Papa
Adrian P. Dunston has worked in companies of all sizes as a software developer, data architect, scrum master, manager, and briefly founder. His hobbies include cross-referencing several dozens of self-help and leadership books which he quotes endlessly to his amazing wife and fabulous children. Adrian is passionate about neurodiversity, using
...Read more
Jarrod Grayson photo
Senior Sales Engineer
Tricentis

Jarrod Grayson is a Senior Sales Engineer at Tricentis, where he focuses on helping customers solve challenges related to test management and test automation. He has nearly 10 years of software testing and engineering industry experience.

Abrar-Hashmi
Enteprise Agile Evangelist
Agile Brains Consulting

Abrar Hashmi is the Chief Agile evangelist and Founder of Agile Brains Consulting Inc. He has assisted in value-based delivery transformations in various Fortune 500 companies and spoken at multiple Agile conferences as well. Agile Brains was listed as Top 10 Agile Solution Provider of 2020 by CIO Applications for...Read more

John-Hill
Web UI Test Engineer, Space Mission Control Software
KBR, Inc.

John Hill is a Web UI Test Engineer working at the NASA Ames Research Center on the VIPER Mission's Web-based Mission Control Software. He has 10 years of UI Testing experience ranging from 5-man startups up to Fortune 50 enterprises. John specializations in Web Test Automation, Performance Engineering, and Test...Read more

Tariq_King
Chief Scientist
test.ai
Tariq King is the Chief Scientist at test.ai, where he leads research and development of their core platform for AI-driven testing. Tariq has over fifteen years' experience in software engineering and testing and has formerly held positions as Head of Quality, Director of Quality Engineering, Manager of Software...Read more
Andrew Knight
Lead Software Engineer in Test
PrecisionLender, a Q2 Company

Andrew Knight is the "Automation Panda"—an engineer, consultant, and international speaker who builds solutions for software testing problems. He has designed and implemented robust test automation projects for Web UIs, service APIs, and operating systems with thousands of tests running continuously. He is the lead developer for Boa Constrictor, the...Read more

Amit-Lacher
Solutions Engineer Team Lead
TestProject

Amit Lacher is the Head of Solutions Engineer Team at TestProject, working hard to make open-source automation tools approachable for both testers & developers, while providing top-notch support to the entire testing community. Amit has true enthusiasm to learning new technologies and acquiring knowledge across testing and development best practices,...Read more

Chris_Loder
Upland InGenius

Chris Loder, a QA Automation Manager at Upland Software, is an automation enthusiast to the core. His passion and experience allow him to help companies reduce regression time and improve overall software quality. With over two decades of automation experience, he designs and implements automation frameworks with his team of...Read more

Janna_Loeffler
Director of Test Engineering
Equinox Media

Janna Loeffler has more than fifteen years of software quality experience. She holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and a master's degree in business administration. Working in a variety of software engineering roles, including development, testing, quality assurance, and DevOps, has provided her with a holistic view of software...Read more

Aprajita-Mathur
Sr. Manager Bioinformatics System Software Engineering
Guardant Health

Aprajita Mathur is a mom, inventor, mentor and international speaker with an engineering background in Bioinformatics. She has more than 15+ years of software testing experience. She has worked on a wide range of products like instrument software, LIMS, integrated solutions and data analysis pipelines which are used in the...Read more

Leandro Melendez
Performance Test Manager
QualiTest

Leandro Melendez is a performance testing manager at QualiTest group providing consulting services around testing. He has over 20 years of experience in IT and over 10 in the performance testing practice where he served multiple S&P 500 customers all over the USA, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, India, Austria, etc. Author...Read more

Rich Mills
DevOps Architect
Coveros

Richard Mills has more than 25 years of experience in software engineering with a concentration on pragmatic software process and tools. Rich has a specific focus in Agile development methods and is passionate about DevOps, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Delivery. As the Solution Architect for DevOps at Coveros, Rich is...Read more

talia-nassi
Senior Developer Advocate
Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Talia Nassi is an international keynote speaker who delivers content on all things testing and quality. She is currently a Senior Development Advocate at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Previously, she worked at Split Software as a developer advocate and at WeWork as an engineer, and implemented Testing in Production from...Read more

CEO
Apptim

Sofia Palamarchuk is a Director and Board Member of software testing services company, Abstracta, and the co-founder and CEO of Apptim. In 2015, after having worked as a performance engineer for a few years, she led Abstracta’s expansion to the United States, heading up business development and working with companies...Read more

Jeff Payne
CEO and Founder
Coveros

Jeffery Payne is CEO and founder of Coveros, Inc., a consulting company that helps organizations accelerate delivery using agile methods. Since its inception in 2008, Coveros has become a market leader in agile and DevOps engineering while being recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies...Read more

Amanda-Perkins
Sr SQA
Rocket Homes

Concurrent Sessions

Amanda Perkins is a Sr SQA for Rocket Homes. She has been in the quality field for 8 years and uses her vast array of job skills to help improve not only the quality of software but the quality of interactions between team members. With a background in customer service,...Read more

Jeff Pierce
Managing Consultant
Coveros

Jeff Pierce has more than 20 years of experience in software engineering management, specializing in program, project, and software quality assurance management. Jeff is also experienced in building technical teams that are rapidly able to implement solutions and deliver business value. More recently, Jeff has focused on Agile project management...Read more

Alan Roberts photo
Senior Director of Product Management
Tricentis

Alan Roberts is the Senior Director of Product Management for Tricentis Analytics and qTest at Tricentis. He’s spent his entire career in the Enterprise Software space and is passionate about creating products that are woven into users’ everyday lives.  As much as Alan loves building products, he loves building teams...Read more

Rob_Sabourin
Principle Consultant
AmiBug.Com, Inc.

Rob Sabourin has more than thirty-five years of management experience leading teams of software development professionals. A highly-respected member of the software engineering community, Rob has managed, trained, mentored, and coached hundreds of top professionals in the field. He frequently speaks at conferences and writes on software engineering, SQA, testing,...Read more

Director
Inflectra

Adam Sandman was a programmer from the age of 10 and has been working in the IT industry for the past 20 years in areas such as architecture, agile development, testing and project management. Adam is the Founder and CEO of Inflectra, where he is interested in technology, business and...Read more

Dionny Santiago
Director of Engineering
test.ai

Dionny Santiago is a Director of Engineering at test.ai, where he leads the development of the core AI-driven testing platform. Dionny's goal is to advance the current state of the art in software testing through the application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Dionny holds a M.S. degree and...Read more

Adam Satterfield
Sr. Director of Engineering Enablement
Global Payments

Adam Satterfield, Sr Director of Test Engineering at Global Payments, has been in the software testing industry for 20 years. He has a wide background in industries such as military, SaaS, telecom, mobile, healthcare and finance. Adam enjoys leading and mentoring quality assurance teams as well as teaching testers how...Read more

Amy Smidutz
Director, Delivery Engineering Team
Netflix

Leadership Summit Sessions

Amy Smidutz is the Director of the Delivery Engineering Team at Netflix. Delivery Engineering owns a variety of platforms responsible for Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Infrastructure Experimentation. She and her team continue to build and enhance delivery tools that enable engineers at Netflix to deploy their services with confidence...Read more

Process Improvement and Data Analytics
TD Bank

Kenia Sousa is a Process Improvement and Data Analysis Specialist with a Ph.D. in Business Administration and Management, 10+ years of experience in business process improvement, and 5+ years of data analytics to optimize processes. She has had experiences in large public and financial institutions in Europe and Canada. In...Read more

Surya-Suravarapu
Broadcom

Surya Suravarapu has over 13 years of experience working in product and IT services industries supporting customers across various domains in Development and QA areas. He has been part of the customer facing SWAT team with expertise in DevOps products for over 4 years at CA Technologies, now Broadcom. He...Read more

Maryam-Umar
Head of Quality Engineering
Thought Machine

Maryam Umar works in London as Head of Quality of a Fintech firm, Thought Machine. She started her career 13 years ago as a QA test engineer in the finance and mobile industry. After transitioning to the eCommerce sector, Maryam performed QA in various capacities for online restaurants and travel...Read more

Sneha Viswalingam
Director of Quality Engineering
EVERFI

Tutorials

Sneha Viswalingam's passion for ‘All things Automation’ began when he started her career right after graduate school in the fancy field of automation in the bay area. Her experience revolves around developing end-to-end automation testing frameworks for web-based and Mobile applications. She enjoys focusing on making automation famous wherever she...Read more

Alison Wade
President
TechWell Corp.

Alison Wade is the President of TechWell and an accomplished executive dedicated to the business of software. For the past fifteen years, she has worked with industry leaders developing programs for software development and testing professionals. She currently serves as the Program Chair for EPIC Experience, STAREAST, and STARWEST. She plays a...Read more

Quality Analyst Accessibility
WA State Department of Licensing

Connie Widener has broad experience in software testing, accessibility, and customer relationships. Connie was the lead tester and coordinator of this accessibility audit. She has been widely recognized for her successful outcomes and is sought after for both technical accessibility training as well as professional development and team-building seminars. She...Read more

Sr. Manager, Communications
SmartBear

Noel Wurst has covered the software testing, development, and cloud computing space for the last 9+ years, and is currently the senior manager of communications at SmartBear. While “professionally responsible” for building communications strategies, and managing public relations initiatives, Noel also has a deep, personal interest in scaling diverse and...Read more