Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Timeline
Generic

Shalini Kamatam

California,CA

Summary

Principal Software Engineer with 15+ years of experience building software systems, automation platforms, and developer tools. I've spent most of my career coding in Python and Go, designing REST APIs, and putting together CI/CD pipelines for production releases. More recently I've been working with AWS for infrastructure projects and led an AI pilot program at Dell where we used LLMs and RAG to speed up internal developmental workflows. Won a Game Changer Award at Dell for a framework I built that changed how teams ship software. I do my best work when I have ownership of the problem and the freedom to solve it end to end.

Overview

15
15
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Principal Software Engineer

Dell
Santa Clara, CA
01.2023 - Current
  • Engineered and led the DellUnit automation framework, leveraging Selenium, Playwright, and REST APIs to deliver comprehensive UI, API, and integration test coverage across PowerFlex releases, increasing test coverage by ~35% and reducing manual testing effort by ~30%.
  • Designed and implemented a Golang-based end-to-end testing framework, enabling shift-left testing through pull request validation for early defect detection and improving release quality and stability through automated end-to-end test execution.
  • Acted as gatekeeper for DellUnit and Atlas repositories, reviewing pull requests, enforcing coding and
    testing standards, and identifying design and quality gaps early to prevent downstream defects.
  • Led automation initiatives for PowerFlex, collaborating with product and engineering teams to translate functional requirements into scalable automation scenarios and ensure automation coverage across releases.
  • Defined and drove automation strategy, test coverage planning, and regression execution, sustaining over 65% automated coverage of regression test suites and ensuring consistent validation of PowerFlex workflows across bootstrap and greenfield deployments, including networking scenarios such as LACP, trunking, and partial and full network configurations across releases.
  • Led a major release (PowerFlex Gen2 – Pyrite), coordinating automation, validation, and release readiness across teams.
  • Introduced strong quality governance practices, including a “stop-the-line” approach for critical defects, significantly improving release stability and reducing production issues.
  • Optimized and scaled CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and AWS, enabling parallel test execution across multiple environments, reducing validation time, and maintaining test execution stability with less than 5% flakiness.
  • Implemented batch automation workflows using scheduled pipelines and cron jobs for nightly regression, ensuring continuous validation of system stability and data consistency.
  • Leveraged AWS services (EC2, S3, Lambda, IAM, CloudFormation) to automate environment provisioning, test execution, and infrastructure setup, improving scalability of test execution across multiple environments and enabling parallel validation workflows while reducing manual effort.
  • Used SQL extensively for test data preparation and validation, including precondition setup, post-execution validation, and regression data integrity checks; supported debugging by identifying data inconsistencies across services.
  • Evaluated and improved test coverage and system architecture, leading refactoring initiatives to enhance scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
  • Used qTest for regression tracking, test reporting, and execution monitoring, enabling visibility into automation coverage, execution stability, and defect trends across PowerFlex Pyrite and Oslo regression cycles.
  • Implemented AWS IAM policies, access controls, and secure credential management practices across CI/CD and automation infrastructure.
  • Mentored junior and mid-level engineers on automation design, Python development, CI/CD practices, and cloud-based testing, strengthening overall team capability.
  • Received the Game Changer Award for driving impactful improvements in automation, testing practices,
    and software delivery efficiency.
  • Initiated and led an AI pilot program to improve developer productivity and automation workflows.
  • Created agent.md guidelines and prompt frameworks for automation repositories, enabling consistent
    use of AI tools.
  • Enabled engineers to leverage LLMs for test generation, code assistance, and debugging, improving development efficiency.
  • Built lightweight AI-assisted workflows to support automation development, code reviews, and knowledge discovery.

Principal Software Engineer

Dell
Hopkinton, MA
01.2019 - 01.2023
  • Architected and built Atlas, a modular automation framework leveraging OOP principles and design patterns, adopted as the standard across Dell's storage organization including PowerStore, PowerDoctor, and PowerFlex and served as the primary point of contact for cross-team integration and support.
  • Designed the dispatcher module to manage interactions between product models and REST APIs, significantly improving API test coverage.
  • Served as the Python subject matter expert; established static analysis, linting standards, and code review processes to maintain code quality across contributors.
  • Built Jenkins CI/CD pipelines with automated defect filing, data collection interlocks, and integration with AWS services and internal ARTS workflows.
  • Provisioned AWS EC2 and S3 infrastructure for scalable test execution, artifact storage, and centralized log aggregation.
  • Authored system design documents for major platform changes and presented proposals to stakeholders prior to implementation.
  • Instrumented the platform during the Telemetry Hackathon to track method-level usage and publish events to Kafka for real-time monitoring.
  • Managed multiple support rotations, triaging and resolving bugs reported by QA and development teams to maintain platform stability and unblock dependent teams.

Senior Engineer

Dell
Hopkinton, MA
09.2015 - 10.2019
  • Worked on automated suites covering multi-appliance setups and distributed array replication environments.
  • Migrated regression tests to a dedicated sanity environment for the Trident program, which gave us faster feedback loops.
  • Part of the Trident stabilization effort fixed critical issues and verified them in CIT before they went to production.
  • Provided end-to-end engineering support for EMC's DSSD product: writing test scripts, verifying product behavior, reviewing docs, and helping with hardware setup.
  • Focused on building reliable tests unit, functional, regression, and integration and keeping them green.
  • Played a key role in EMC’s DSSD startup initiative, building and supporting DevOps infrastructure for production-stage systems, developing automation scripts, streamlining deployment workflows, and improving engineering efficiency across development and release operations. Reduced manual deployment effort by ~40%, accelerated environment setup time from days to hours, and helped improve release stability during rapid product scaling.

Senior Engineer

Ansys
Hanover, NH
06.2011 - 09.2015
  • Worked on the Platform Infrastructure team building test automation and developer tools for Ansys Workbench, Fluent, Mechanical, WB-EKM, and RSM.
  • Mentored new hires on QA and engineering practices. Helped people get productive fast.
  • Converted hundreds of manual test cases to automated Python regression suites. Big reduction in manual effort.
  • Pushed the team toward test-driven development (TDD). It changed how we thought about quality catching things earlier in the cycle.
  • Set up build promotions and gating in TeamCity CI/CD so we had proper monitoring of daily builds.
  • Did root cause analysis on recurring defects to fix them for good, not just patch symptoms.
  • Set up HPC clusters for testing large-scale simulations. Got exposure to cloud and enterprise infrastructure early in my career.
  • Participated in design reviews across the SDLC gave input on requirements, designs, timelines, and risk.

Software Engineer

Pathway Technologies
Malvern, PA
12.2010 - 06.2011
  • Designed, coded, debugged, and modified software enhancements in collaboration with product managers and users.
  • Participated in software design meetings to define technical requirements and modifications.

Education

Masters in Engineering - Mechanical Engineering

Villanova University
Pennsylvania, USA
01-2011

Bachelors in Engineering - Mechanical Engineering

Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University
Telangana, India
01-2007

Skills

  • Languages: Python (SME) Golang Java JavaScript/TypeScript SQL
  • Cloud: AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda, IAM) Docker Kubernetes
  • AI/ML: LLMs RAG Prompt Engineering Vector Databases NLP basics
  • DevOps: Jenkins GitHub Actions Git CI/CD Pipelines Kafka Build Automation
  • Testing: Selenium Playwright REST API Testing TDD Unit/Integration/Performance Testing
  • Other: Agile/Scrum System Design Code Reviews JIRA Confluence

Certification

Scrum Master and Product Owner Certified

Timeline

Principal Software Engineer

Dell
01.2023 - Current

Principal Software Engineer

Dell
01.2019 - 01.2023

Senior Engineer

Dell
09.2015 - 10.2019

Senior Engineer

Ansys
06.2011 - 09.2015

Software Engineer

Pathway Technologies
12.2010 - 06.2011

Masters in Engineering - Mechanical Engineering

Villanova University

Bachelors in Engineering - Mechanical Engineering

Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University