Mallikarjuna Mudiam

Director of Engineering

Merchant e-Solutions — Atlanta, GA | Reported to CTO

Led the full B2B engineering organization across development, QA, data engineering, and DevOps. Owned a $6M annual budget with 4 engineering managers, 1 senior architect, and 60+ engineers across the US, Argentina, India, and Thailand — coordinating delivery across 4 time zones.

• Directed delivery for core payment processing platforms: Authorization, Clearing, Settlement, Merchant & Partner Billing, and Onboarding services handling 100+ TPS
• Led full migration of legacy services from on-premises data centers to AWS, enabling high availability and reducing infrastructure costs
• Delivered cloud-native services supporting multiple business models: Direct Sales, ISO, ISV, PayFacs, and Financial Institutions
• Established CI/CD and DevSecOps pipelines with SAST/DAST security scanning using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, SonarQube, CloudFormation/Terraform, and AWS-native tooling
• Launched Data Lake initiative — tasked the data engineering team to build analytics layer from AWS Aurora, migrating reporting workloads off production databases
• Led incident management and on-call processes; drove post-incident reviews and root cause analysis for payment-critical production systems
• Drove capacity planning and forecasting for engineering teams; led monthly engineering operations reviews with CTO using DORA metrics
• Led architecture decision-making through design reviews and ADRs; oversaw technical documentation and operational runbooks
• Introduced GenAI tooling to accelerate developer productivity in code reviews, test generation, and API documentation
• Partnered with Product, Sales, and Operations to align engineering roadmaps with business strategy; participated in executive planning with CTO

Key Results:

• Achieved 4x improvement in deployment velocity with 50% reduction in production incidents
• Reduced merchant onboarding time by 40% through workflow automation
• Enabled real-time clearing and settlement processing with sub-second SLAs

Director of Quality Assurance

Merchant e-Solutions — Atlanta, GA

Promoted to lead the entire quality organization. Expanded scope from test automation to company-wide quality strategy, shift-left practices, and release governance.

• Defined and enforced quality gates across all payment platform releases — Authorization, Settlement, and Onboarding pipelines
• Implemented shift-left testing strategy, embedding QA engineers within Agile development teams
• Established OpenAPI-first documentation practices, enabling contract testing and reducing integration defects
• Built performance and load testing strategy for high-availability payment processing systems
• Led production debugging and troubleshooting for critical payment flows; built root cause analysis discipline across teams
• Championed adoption of SonarQube for static analysis and SAST security scanning across all services

QA Manager

Merchant e-Solutions — Atlanta, GA

Managed and scaled the QA team, transitioning from manual testing to full automation. Built the team that became the foundation of the engineering org.

• Built and scaled QA team across US and offshore locations, establishing hiring criteria and onboarding processes
• Built CI-integrated test automation pipelines using Selenium, JBehave, and Jenkins
• Introduced BDD frameworks and structured test architecture across payment platform services
• Led regression, integration, and end-to-end testing strategy for PCI-compliant payment systems
• Facilitated sprint planning, retrospectives, and design reviews across Agile teams
• Launched knowledge sharing programs including tech talks and engineering brown bags
• Mentored SDETs and QA engineers into leadership roles; coached Agile teams on quality practices

Senior Test Automation Architect

Merchant e-Solutions — Atlanta, GA

Designed and built the test automation frameworks from scratch for the payments platform.

• Architected automation frameworks using Selenium, Java, and JBehave integrated with Jenkins CI
• Provided tooling recommendations and established automation standards for distributed teams
• Led QA strategy engagements, creating blueprints for regression and automation coverage
• Coached SDETs across Agile teams on test architecture and framework usage

Test Automation Lead & QA Engineer

Manheim (Cox Automotive) | TSYS Loyalty | Macy's | UPS | Dell | Fundtech | MCI | Berkshire Hathaway

14 years of progressive QA and test automation roles across enterprise platforms in payments, logistics, retail, telecom, and insurance:

• Manheim / Cox Automotive (2015-2016): Led automation for auto auction platforms using Selenium, Jenkins CI, and Applitools visual testing
• TSYS Loyalty (2008-2015): Test architect for Visa/MC/Discover rewards and prepaid card platforms — built BDD automation, batch testing, and web service test suites across 7 years
• Macy's (2015): Lead Automation Engineer — built BDD framework for Warehouse Management System using JBehave and Selenium Grid
• UPS Online Tools (2006-2008): Tested 20+ XML-based shipping APIs; led web service interoperability and regression strategy
• Dell (2004-2005): QA for accounts receivable systems including stress/load testing and UAT automation
• Fundtech (2008): Performance testing of multi-currency banking platform (CASHplus) using LoadRunner
• MCI (2004): QA for online customer billing systems in telecom
• Berkshire Hathaway (2002-2003): QA for insurance e-commerce platform — first industry role