Kat Le
Summary
Senior Quality & Risk leader driving software quality, governance, compliance, and operational risk across global teams. Leads quality strategy, KPI reporting, and cross-functional audit coordination while building control processes that support secure, reliable delivery. Delivers measurable results through defect reduction, strong evidence management, and zero major non-conformities.
Overview
1
1
Certification
25
25
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior Manager, Quality & Risk
Hilti
Plano, TX
08.2022 - Current
- Define the quality strategy to align with and support the business unit's objectives, ensuring integration with the organization's overarching ten-year strategic vision.
- Established governance models, control processes, documentation standards, and compliance requirements to support audit readiness and mitigate risks across business units.
- Led a global team of Software Quality Managers across multiple countries, driving governance, compliance, and operational risk management across enterprise software programs.
- Regularly align with cross-functional leadership to develop and refine roadmaps for current-year objectives and three-year strategic plans, ensuring cohesive direction and shared priorities across the business unit.
- Partner closely with internal audit, external auditors, security, engineering, product, and business stakeholders to coordinate audit activities, support evidence collection, and ensure successful audit outcomes with zero major nonconformities
- Defined governance, quality requirements, and SLAs for security remediation, including vulnerability scanning, SAST/DAST, and penetration test validation, to align with global security standards.
- Establish KPIs, reporting frameworks, and operational metrics to monitor compliance health, quality trends, audit readiness, and risk posture, enabling data-driven decision making for leadership
- Reduce critical production bugs by 50% through process improvements and preventive action plans, by utilizing root cause analysis and high-risk audits.
- Led customer-initiated IT security assessments for software solutions, coordinating internal teams and ensuring compliance with security standards.
- Lead product complaint handling by partnering with technical experts, quality teams, and legal stakeholders to ensure thorough investigation and effective mitigation of issues, safeguarding customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance.
Software Quality Manager
Hilti
Plano, TX
03.2020 - 08.2022
- Led global cross-functional QA teams and vendor partners to implement scalable testing strategies (manual and automated) aligned with SDLC, STLC, and CI/CD pipelines, ensuring reliable, secure, and compliant software delivery.
- Strengthened defect prevention by implementing test automation strategies, TDD/BDD frameworks (SpecFlow), and conducting proactive root cause analysis.
- Reduced product risk by translating complex risk assessments into actionable quality requirements and mitigation plans.
- Improved QA effectiveness by defining performance benchmarks, expanding test coverage, and reducing escaped defects.
- Influenced product decisions within Agile teams by providing objective quality oversight and managing delivery trade-offs.
- Fostered a culture of continuous improvement and accountability across globally distributed teams.
- Delivered actionable insights by analyzing quality metrics, performing audits, managing complaints, and reporting risks.
- Applied quality methodologies like FMEA, A3, and statistical analysis to enhance governance and ensure product compliance.
- Drove software quality and product risk management for the Hilti Construction Platform and digital engineering services, supporting delivery of high-impact web applications that solve complex engineering and construction challenges.
Software Quality Assurance Manager
Verizon
Irving, TX
01.2002 - 05.2019
- Progressed through increasingly senior leadership roles from Quality Assurance Engineer to Team Lead and QA Manager, building deep expertise in quality engineering, test automation, Agile transformation, global team leadership, and enterprise-scale delivery.
- Led global quality assurance initiatives across enterprise applications, building and scaling high-performing QA teams while driving modernization of testing practices, automation, and Agile delivery.
- Led the transformation of the FiOS testing organization from a waterfall model to Agile/Scrum, enabling incremental delivery and faster release cycles across multiple Verizon applications.
- Directed end-to-end QA delivery across 15+ enterprise systems, including Optix, Door to Door, Verizon.com, SSP, RxOrder, Unity Adapter, SOP, and Service Express.
- Built and managed global QA team, including a 15-member offshore team, overseeing hiring, onboarding, mentoring, and performance management to ensure team effectiveness.
- Developed and executed automation and CI/CD strategies using tools such as Jenkins, Selenium, SOAPUI, Eclipse, and Spring Tool Suite, reducing manual effort and improving deployment speed.
- Defined test strategies, risk assessments, and QA processes aligned with business priorities, enhancing release readiness and product quality across multiple projects.
- Managed 5-10 concurrent releases per month, coordinating global testing resources and ensuring on-time, high-quality deployments.
- Reduced production defects by 75% year-over-year by implementing strong traceability from business requirements through test cases across the SDLC.
- Drove continuous improvement through design reviews, regression suite enhancements, and automation readiness, increasing release stability by over 30%.
Education
MBA - Business Management
Walden University
BBA - Management Information Systems
University of Houston
Skills
- Quality & Risk Management
- Software Quality Assurance & Testing
- Agile & DevOps Quality Integration
- Enterprise Governance & Compliance
- Regulatory & Security Compliance
- Regulatory compliance
- ISO audit readiness
- Risk assessment
- Process Improvement & Continuous Improvement
- KPI & Quality Metrics Strategy
- Global team leadership
- Cross-Functional Stakeholder Leadership
- Tools: Jenkins, SOAP UI, JIRA, Gitlab, Confluence, Sharepoint, MS Office, Copilot, ThinkCell, ServiceNow, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Generative AI, Prompt Engineering, AI-Assisted Analysis, Content Generation, Process Automation
Certification
Certified Scrum Master, ASPICE, FMEA, Problem Solving
Accomplishments
- Reduced critical production bugs 50% through preventive quality strategies and root cause analysis.
- Achieved zero audit non-conformities across business unit programs under ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 and internal audit frameworks.
- Improved release stability by 30%+ by establishing quality governance and requirements for CI/CD quality gates, enabling teams to integrate automated testing and continuous validation across releases.
- Led global quality transformation initiatives across enterprise platforms supporting digital engineering solutions.
- Created the software quality strategy for the business unit, aligning quality objectives with business goals and long-term strategic direction.
- Established business unit governance guidelines, processes, and standards, creating consistent, audit-ready ways of working across teams.
- Built the vulnerability management framework, defining governance, requirements, and remediation SLAs to strengthen security posture.
- Implemented quality gatekeepers in the code pipeline, ensuring code meets defined quality and security criteria before release.
Volunteering & Community Engagement
- Asian & Pacific Islander Employee Resource Group, Leadership, 2024, Present
- The Source of Hope, Volunteer, 2019, Present
- Big Brother Big Sister, Mentor, 2021, Present
- Project Graduation, President, 2020, 2021
- The Magi Ministry, Volunteer, 2021, Present
- Hunger Busters, Volunteer, 2017, 2020
- The Prodigal Projects, Volunteer, 2018, 2021
Leadership & Professional Development
- Situational Leadership
- Coaching & Mentoring
- Psychological Safety & High-Trust Teams
- Leading Leaders & Talent Development
- Performance Management & Feedback
- Strategic Leadership Development
- Team Management & Organizational Leadership
Technical & Quality Training
- A3 Problem Solving
- FMEA
- Root Cause Analysis
- DevOps Practices
- Software Testing Methodologies
- Cybersecurity Fundamentals
- Quality First Thinking
- Audit Strategy & Governance
- Training in ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems
- Training in ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management Systems
- Training in ISO 31000 Risk Management
- Training in ISO/IEC 42001 Artificial Intelligence Management Systems
- Applied management-system principles in quality assurance, risk-based auditing, process compliance, and continuous improvement
Timeline
Senior Manager, Quality & Risk
Hilti
08.2022 - Current
Software Quality Manager
Hilti
03.2020 - 08.2022
Software Quality Assurance Manager
Verizon
01.2002 - 05.2019
MBA - Business Management
Walden University
BBA - Management Information Systems
University of Houston