Sankaran Periasamy
Fremont,CA
Summary
Results-driven Principal Engineer specializing in software quality assurance for cloud-based solutions. Led global teams to implement quality initiatives that significantly reduced qualification costs and accelerated release cycles. Expertise in mentoring cross-functional teams and optimizing QA architecture, cloud validation, and test processes to enhance product quality.
Overview
23
23
years of professional experience
Work History
Principal Engineer (MTS 6)
NetApp
10.2021 - Current
- QA Architecture & Release Strategy: Owns the overall release test strategy and infrastructure for Cloud IP products (Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, ANF Elastic ZRS). Drives quality initiatives across 30+ engineers of various teams to ensure on-schedule, enterprise-quality containerized ONTAP releases.
- Spearheaded cloud cost optimization initiative, reducing cloud qualification expenses by 40% and accelerating patch release time-to-market from one week to two days through innovative test optimization.
- Cloud Transition & Validation: Led the transition of the qualification strategy to Azure from Google Cloud. Performed hands-on validation and automation for HA (ZRS), Data Protection (Backup/Restore, CRR) and Security features.
- Initiated and deployed scalability test frameworks for Atom IP products, defining and publishing supported limits to enhance performance for enterprise customers.
- Implemented quality initiatives for Astra Data Store, enhancing system integration and application workload testing, with hands-on debugging and automation improving failover RTO.
Senior Engineer & QA Architect (MTS 5 & MTS 4)
NetApp
09.2013 - 10.2021
- Delivered critical features as QA Architect for ONTAP HA & MCC-IP, including Mediator Assisted Auto Switchover, HA Solutions for Cloud (AWS / Azure), and software-defined ONTAP & platforms.
- Led major quality initiatives, implementing shift-left testing, extensive code coverage analysis, and transitioning regression testing to CIT. Championed adoption of PYNACL framework for automation.
- Infrastructure & Deployment Automation: Implemented Ansible playbooks for MCC-IP deployment and transition projects, significantly simplifying production deployments.
- Mentored QA leads and engineers across multiple projects, participating in hackathons to implement early POCs of Firetap for K8s-based workloads, foundational for Astra Data Store.
QA Lead & Engineer (MTS)
NetApp
06.2006 - 10.2013
- Proposed and implemented new test framework for vStorage testing with ESX servers, automating workflows with NATE framework (Perl) to streamline testing processes.
- Collaborated with technical marketing and product management to understand customer scenarios, enhancing system test coverage through introduction of new DPSYS framework.
- Led SAN stress and scalability project, validated core SAN limits for ONTAP platforms, and introduced SAN testing with SANBlaze while developing NACL framework to ensure robustness and reliability.
- Configured NetApp Filers as NFS servers (v3/v4), stressed them with thousands of simultaneous requests, and emulated complex customer escalations through enterprise scenarios with virtual NFS clients.
Lecturer in CSE department
Tamilnadu College of Engineering
01.2003 - 01.2004
Education
M.E. - Software Engineering
College of Engg, Guindy
B.E. - Computer Science & Engg
Periyar University
Skills
- Test strategy
- QA architecture
- Test optimization
- Cloud validation
- Cloud platforms
- Container orchestration
- Stack: HA, DR, data protection, security, REST APIs
- Automation: Python, Perl, Ansible; GitHub Copilot, VS Code
- Storage solutions
Publications Awards Certifications
Seamless Restoration of Disaster Site in NetApp Technical Journal (NATJ), Total Customer Experience Champion, SAN Champion, QA & Automation Champions, Filed 6 NIRs with NetApp patent department, NCDA (NetApp Certified Data Administrator)
Roles And Responsibilities
Lecturer, CSE department, Tamilnadu College of Engineering, 01/01/03, 01/01/04
Timeline
Principal Engineer (MTS 6)
NetApp
10.2021 - Current
Senior Engineer & QA Architect (MTS 5 & MTS 4)
NetApp
09.2013 - 10.2021
QA Lead & Engineer (MTS)
NetApp
06.2006 - 10.2013
Lecturer in CSE department
Tamilnadu College of Engineering
01.2003 - 01.2004
M.E. - Software Engineering
College of Engg, Guindy
B.E. - Computer Science & Engg
Periyar University