Suchitra Sahadevan Arakkal

Quality Engineering · Test Automation · Berlin

Suchitra Sahadevan Arakkal

Quality Engineering

Profile

Quality engineering professional with 16+ years in manual and test automation (5+ years), process optimization, and engineering excellence across large-scale enterprise and public sector projects. Proven ability to build and lead cross-functional teams, implement robust test strategies, and deliver high-quality software in Agile environments for global organizations. Expertise spans UI automation, API & integration testing, and database verification. Recognized for technical rigor, collaborative leadership, and successful rollout of mission-critical solutions.

Areas of expertise

Quality engineering leadership · Test automation · Agile & project management · Team enablement · Test strategy & planning · API & database testing · Regression & integration testing · Bug tracking & reporting · Product ownership · Requirements analysis

Experience

  • Jul 2025 - Present

    Freelance QA Tester (Automation & Manual)

    Procodebase — India (remote)

    Freelance QA for Procodebase, performing automated and manual testing for the core product Varisht, a school management application—supporting preparation and successful go-live, including production readiness.

    • Automated test scripts with Playwright to improve coverage and reduce manual effort.
    • Manual and automated testing across core product flows for release quality.

  • Feb 2023 - Apr 2025

    Manual QA Tester

    Foodspring GmbH — Berlin

    Tested an e-commerce platform live across six European markets after migration from Magento to Shopware, including seamless payments via Adyen and PayPal and continuous regression of new features each sprint.

    • Structured QA with detailed cases, regression suites in Jira, and clear reporting for coverage and traceability.
    • Faster turnaround on production issues through investigation, coordination on fixes and workarounds.
    • Built a Cypress automation suite that reduced regression duration by roughly four hours; collaborated with DevOps on future CI/CD integration.
    • Integration and A/B testing with Postman and AB Tasty; surfaced edge cases and fed quality metrics into sprint planning.

  • Oct 2021 - Mar 2022

    Principal Consultant

    Mercedes-Benz (MBRDI) — India

    Managed and enabled a cross-functional team for rollout of a financial application using Agile in a critical global release.

    • Led Phase 1 of the Paris release, aligning multiple teams for delivery.
    • Developed and executed test plans with Xray; rigorous API integration testing with Postman, helping reduce post-release issues by about 25%.
    • Supported Agile adoption, improving coverage and sprint throughput.

  • Sep 2018 - Sep 2021

    Lead QE

    Aurigo Software Technologies — India

    Directed automation and QA for large-scale, government-funded projects across environments.

    • Led QEs across functional, regression, and system testing with consistent on-time delivery.
    • Robot Framework & Python automation that cut manual testing effort by approximately 30%.
    • Oversaw critical production bugs and feature requests in a high-availability setting.
    • Worked with stakeholders on test data integrity and validation across systems.

  • Aug 2015 - Sep 2018

    Senior Consultant

    Capgemini India — India

    Strategic QA for enterprise platforms with emphasis on test case management and API integration.

    • Test plans, strategies, and cases in HP Micro Focus Quality Center.
    • API integration tests (e.g. SOAP UI), increasing defect detection by about 20% before production.
    • Cross-functional collaboration to hit milestones and raise productivity.

  • Aug 2012 - Apr 2015

    Senior Software Engineer

    Thomson Reuters — India

    ETL testing for critical data migration and legacy transitions.

    • SQL for regression and data integrity verification.
    • Validated large-scale ETL migrations for core business data.

  • Apr 2009 - Aug 2012

    Software Engineer

    Accenture Services — India

    ETL and data warehouse testing for migration projects: test cases and smooth upstream data transitions.