JAY WALTERS
Parkville,MD
Summary
- SOFTWARE & QUALITY ENGINEERING
- SENIOR LEADERSHIP
- CROSS-FUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION
- TALENT DEVELOPMENT
- 32 years of software development
- 13 years of software testing
- 15 years of technical leadership
- 7 years of senior management
- Driven and seasoned software development, testing, cybersecurity, and operations executive, possessing an entrepreneurial spirit. Proven record of consistently surpassing expectations. Recognized as a full-stack leader and change agent, adept at guiding software development from inception through delivery. History of individual and team contributions, optimizing for efficiency, driving strategy and operational excellence, and championing big-picture thinking.
Overview
16
16
years of professional experience
Work History
Founder & Lead Consultant
CONSTANTLY TESTING LLC
01.2019 - Current
- Consulting and coaching businesses, engineering leaders, and individual contributors to enable QA, QE, and DevTestSecOps skills
- Developing hands-on courses to address fundamental behavioral and operational challenges of constantly validating software
- Player/coach building custom software and providing professional services that help teams bake quality and security into their DNA
- Supporting clients with data-driven decision-making, engineer productivity, continuous improvement, and shared quality responsibilities
- Helping teams with foundational quality disciplines including exploratory testing, test automation, test data management, infrastructure as code, as well as functional and non-functional testing (security, performance, recovery, compliance, internationalization, accessibility).
Principal Software Engineer & Head of Quality Engineering
AETION
08.2021 - 10.2023
- Worked across the company to establish modern, supercharged, highly collaborative engineering capabilities
- Institutionalized modern automated testing and operations/SRE capabilities, led the quality group, and completed complex compliance initiatives
- Fostered an organization-wide culture of innovation, creativity, high-quality software practices, and continuous improvement
- Accountable leader responsible for $1.75+ million in staff and vendor expenditures to achieve modern, advanced testing technologies
- Pioneered regulatory-compliant delivery capabilities and drove 20% cost reductions via the early detection of defects and security issues
- Oversaw organizational goals and strategy, team growth and development, staff distribution, capacity planning, and reporting
- Spearheaded improvements in pre- and post-installation tests, leading teams to enhance their quality and speed by 10% to 60%
- Led efforts to reduce the company's SAST and SCA-based security vulnerabilities by 80% and lower the defect escape rate by 25%.
Principal Software Engineer, Enterprise Quality
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL
01.2021 - 08.2021
- Senior Director-level and individual contributor responsibilities with 12 direct reports working to establish a world-class DevTestOps (development, testing, and operations) culture, creating processes and practices to support the 2,500+ person organization
- Co-founded the Enterprise Quality group to standardize company-wide quality practices and provide training, support, and governance
- Owner of $2.5M staff and vendor budget
- Created roadmap, directed staff, led estimation and prioritization, and stakeholder negotiation
- Responsible for defining and monitoring company-wide quality improvement roadmap including related metrics and OKRs/KPIs
- Deeply involved in enterprise transformation, leading multiple teams into 10% lower-cost, 25% higher-quality through automation
- Organized high levels of collaboration and alignment between technical and non-technical teams to drive successful software delivery
- Led a team of five high school interns to achieve NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing, leveraging shift left discipline and cloud computing technologies, with a focus on iterating quickly and shipping code frequently, to produce a fully working MVP prototype.
Senior Director of Software Engineering, Developer Enablement
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL
03.2018 - 08.2021
- Led a multi-year initiative and roadmap focusing on shift left, test everywhere, and continuous integration practices to support the transformation of 80M lines of application, test automation, and infrastructure code managed by 2,500+ technical contributors
- Relocated to Milwaukee to work with home office engineers while overseeing multiple facets of the geographically disbursed teams
- Directed a $7.5 million staff and vendor budget, overseeing staff, setting priorities, stakeholder negotiation, and fulfilling commitments
- Led the organizational recruiting, mentoring, training, and retention for four teams with 4 associate directors and 50+ individuals
- Fostered a culture of innovation, creativity, high-quality software practices, and continuous improvement within the technology team
- Collaborated with product management, engineering, and field teams to understand customer needs and requirements
- Established engineering productivity and quality-focused OKRs (objectives and key results) and KPIs (key performance indicators)
- Drove company-wide initiative to measure, institutionalize, and improve code quality, code coverage, and developer productivity by 25%
- Conceptualized and implemented a web service-based, synthetic test data management solution that improved test performance by 30%
- Recognized by the company's Tech Advancement and Outreach (TAO) organization as an Influencer of the Year for 2019.
Senior Software Engineering Manager & Lead Software Engineer
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL
10.2016 - 03.2018
- Hybrid developer and tester with both senior manager and lead engineer daily responsibilities
- Prototyped and championed new development and testing capabilities to evolve how the company collaboratively builds, validates, and performs software releases
- Led $3M staffing to build a 25+ developer and SDET team supporting the company's CRM and financial planning platform teams
- Conceived and executed multiple projects that improved team efficiency by 75%+ using reusable code and API-based automation
- Implemented Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) test automation that resulted in 20% to 70% organization-wide improvements in test coverages, defect removal efficiency (DRE), and reduced defect escape rates to enhance customer experience and satisfaction
- Institutionalized high code quality, scalable and resilient systems, containerization, and infrastructure-as-code practices
- Conceptualized and delivered a multi-year University Outreach program to teach college students modern development and testing skills
- Formed relationships with professors at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to enroll and support students in 12-week programs
- Successfully recruited 13 of the 50 highest-performing graduating seniors from the five semesters of the college program
- The University Outreach team was recognized by the Tech Advancement and Outreach (TAO) group as an Influencer of the Year for 2018.
Senior Software Engineer
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL
10.2015 - 10.2016
- Retained following the acquisition of a former start-up and challenged with integrating technology systems after sitting on the M&A team
- Engaged stakeholders at the Milwaukee headquarters, developing a roadmap for various successful API integrations
- Immersed in the organization's microservices architecture and API design to establish high-quality, highly reusable web services
- Championed the use of TDD (Test Driven Development), OpenAPI specifications, and the creation of a unified API gateway
- Pioneered various proofs-of-concepts for migrating projects from on-premise to AWS and GCP cloud computing using Kubernetes
- Introduced unit, component, and end-to-end test standards and corresponding technologies to improve code quality practices
- Developed and led a first-of-its-kind, enterprise-wide initiative to start code quality practices and enable developer-driven testing.
Lead Software Engineer, Integration Hub
EBAY ENTERPRISE
01.2013 - 01.2015
Architect and Lead Engineer, Software Testing Technologies
EBAY ENTERPRISE
01.2011 - 01.2013
Technical Lead/Senior Software Engineer
EBAY ENTERPRISE
01.2008 - 01.2011
Education
Skills
- Multi-discipline Expertise in Development, Testing, Security & Operations (DevTestSecOps)
- Strategic Planning
- Collaboration
- Software Engineering
- Training & Development
- Project & Team Leadership
- Change Management
- C-Suite & Public Presentations
- Productivity
- Coaching & Mentoring
- Agile Practices
- Software Architecture & Design
- Code Patterns & Code Quality
- Process & Test Automation
- APIs & Web Services
- AWS & GCP Cloud-native Solutions
- SAST, SCA & DAST Expertise
- SRE & Platform Engineering
- BDD & TDD Mastery
- Product Roadmaps
- Entrepreneurial and Innovative
- Recruitment and Hiring
- Goal Setting
- Talent Acquisition
- Team Engagement
- Process Improvements
- Policies and Procedures Development
- Strategic Vision
- Hiring and Recruitment
- Team Leadership
- Product Development
- Quality Assurance Controls
- Technical Integration
- Compliance Understanding
- Technology Integration
- Personnel Management
- Interdisciplinary Collaboration
- Quality Assurance
- Training and Mentoring
Websites
Patent
SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE AUTOMATION, US 9,411,575, 08/09/2016
Timeline
Principal Software Engineer & Head of Quality Engineering
AETION
08.2021 - 10.2023
Principal Software Engineer, Enterprise Quality
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL
01.2021 - 08.2021
Founder & Lead Consultant
CONSTANTLY TESTING LLC
01.2019 - Current
Senior Director of Software Engineering, Developer Enablement
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL
03.2018 - 08.2021
Senior Software Engineering Manager & Lead Software Engineer
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL
10.2016 - 03.2018
Senior Software Engineer
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL
10.2015 - 10.2016
Lead Software Engineer, Integration Hub
EBAY ENTERPRISE
01.2013 - 01.2015
Architect and Lead Engineer, Software Testing Technologies
EBAY ENTERPRISE
01.2011 - 01.2013
Technical Lead/Senior Software Engineer
EBAY ENTERPRISE
01.2008 - 01.2011
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