Naresh Sekar
ENGINEERING MANAGER

Naresh Sekar

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01.

About Me

Engineering leader building at the intersection of AI and quality.

I'm an Engineering Manager who bridges the gap between cutting-edge AI and reliable software delivery. With over a decade of experience across startups and scale-ups, I specialize in building high-performing teams, designing quality-first engineering cultures, and leveraging AI to accelerate product development. I believe great engineering leadership is about multiplying the impact of every person on your team.

AI Product Strategy

Integrating AI/ML capabilities into product workflows - from LLM-powered features to intelligent test generation and data-driven decision systems.

Team Building

Scaling engineering teams from 5 to 30+, establishing career frameworks, hiring pipelines, and fostering cultures of ownership and continuous improvement.

Quality Engineering

Designing end-to-end quality strategies - test automation frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, observability, and shift-left quality practices at scale.

02.

Career Journey

A decade of growth - from hands-on engineering to leading teams.

Jan 2023 - Present
Engineering Manager
TestGorilla
Remote · Netherlands
Leading cross-functional engineering teams building AI-powered talent assessment products. Driving quality strategy and engineering excellence across the platform.
  • Managing multiple squads across AI assessment, platform infrastructure, and quality engineering
  • Spearheaded AI integration initiatives including LLM-powered test generation and automated evaluation
  • Established engineering quality metrics and observability practices, reducing production incidents by 40%
  • Built and scaled the QA engineering team, implementing shift-left testing strategy
  • Drove cross-team architectural decisions and technical roadmap planning
Python TypeScript React Django AWS LLMs CI/CD Datadog
Mar 2022 - Jan 2023
Lead SDET
TestGorilla
Remote · Netherlands
Led the quality engineering practice end-to-end - from test strategy to automation infrastructure. Built the SDET team from the ground up.
  • Designed and implemented the end-to-end test automation framework from scratch
  • Hired and mentored a team of SDETs across multiple geographies
  • Achieved 80% reduction in regression testing cycle time through parallelized automation
  • Established quality gates in CI/CD pipelines, preventing critical defects from reaching production
Python Playwright pytest GitHub Actions Docker
Jun 2021 - Mar 2022
Senior SDET
Hopin
Remote · London, UK
Drove quality engineering for the world's fastest-growing virtual events platform during hyper-growth phase.
  • Built robust test automation suites for real-time video streaming and event management features
  • Collaborated with 10+ engineering squads to embed quality practices in fast-paced agile workflows
  • Implemented performance testing framework to ensure platform scalability for 100K+ concurrent users
TypeScript Cypress WebRTC Ruby AWS
Jul 2020 - Jun 2021
Lead SDET
Vue.ai (Mad Street Den)
Chennai, India
Led quality engineering for an AI-powered retail automation platform, building test frameworks for computer vision and ML pipelines.
  • Designed test strategies for AI/ML models including image recognition and product recommendation engines
  • Built automated regression suites reducing release validation from days to hours
  • Created open-source test automation frameworks published on npm, PyPI, and RubyGems
Python Ruby Node.js Selenium AI/ML Testing
Oct 2019 - Jul 2020
Senior SDET
WeInvest
Chennai, India
Owned quality for a fintech robo-advisory platform, ensuring regulatory compliance and reliable financial workflows.
  • Implemented end-to-end API and UI test automation for investment portfolio management features
  • Established quality processes for regulatory compliance testing across multiple markets
Java REST Assured Selenium Jenkins
Feb 2018 - Oct 2019
Software Engineer
Freshworks
Chennai, India
Delivered quality for Freshworks' SaaS suite serving 50K+ businesses, working across Freshdesk and Freshservice products.
  • Built and maintained UI and API automation suites for customer support and ITSM products
  • Contributed to cross-team quality standards and shared testing libraries
  • Mentored junior engineers on test design and automation best practices
Ruby Selenium Cucumber Jenkins AWS
Sep 2015 - Feb 2018
Programmer Analyst
Cognizant Technology Solutions
Chennai, India
Started career in enterprise quality engineering, building test automation for large-scale telecom and banking projects.
  • Developed automation frameworks for enterprise applications using Selenium and Java
  • Delivered regression and functional testing for telecom billing systems
  • Earned CCNA and CCNP certifications while working on network infrastructure projects
Java Selenium TestNG SOAP UI Oracle DB
03.

Technical Skills

A full-stack quality & engineering toolkit honed over a decade.

Languages

Python
TypeScript
Ruby

AI Stack

AI Agents (Claude Code workflows)
Prompt Engineering
LLM Evals & RAG Architecture
Anthropic APIs · n8n · Zapier

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS (Solutions Architect)
Serverless Architecture
Docker & Kubernetes
CI/CD (CircleCI, GitLab, GitHub)

Quality & Observability

Data Observability (Mixpanel, Holistics, Snowflake)
Performance Engineering (k6, Lighthouse)
Automation (Playwright, Cypress)
Contract Testing (Pact)
04.

Leadership Philosophy

How I build teams, ship products, and drive impact.

AI-Augmented Engineering

Embedding AI tools and workflows into every stage of the SDLC - from code generation and review to intelligent testing and deployment.

Team Growth

Investing in people through mentorship, clear career ladders, and creating psychological safety that empowers engineers to take bold bets.

Strategic Planning

Translating business goals into engineering roadmaps with clear milestones, measurable outcomes, and adaptive execution.

Cross-functional Collaboration

Breaking silos between product, design, and engineering to align on shared outcomes. Building bridges across distributed teams and time zones.

Operational Excellence

Driving reliability through SLOs, incident management, runbooks, and a culture of blameless post-mortems and continuous improvement.

Data-Driven Decisions

Using engineering metrics, user data, and experimentation to prioritize ruthlessly and make confident product and technical decisions.

05.

Publications

Sharing knowledge through writing and open source.

Management
In Action
Naresh Sekar

Management In Action

by Naresh Sekar · Published on Amazon Kindle

A hands-on guide to effective engineering management - covering team building, decision-making, stakeholder alignment, and leadership practices that drive real impact in fast-paced technology organizations.

View on Amazon Read on Medium
06.

Certifications

Continuous learning across engineering, cloud, and leadership.

AWS Solutions Architect Associate

Amazon Web Services

Reforge - Engineering Management

Reforge

CCNA & CCNP Routing and Switching

Cisco Systems

Google Project Management Certificate

Google (Coursera)

Strategic Leadership & Management

University of Illinois (Coursera)

BEC Vantage (Business English)

Cambridge Assessment

07.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering - Electronics & Communication
Anna University
2011 - 2015 · Chennai, India
08.

Let's Connect

Open to conversations about engineering leadership, AI, and collaboration.

LinkedIn
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GitHub
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Medium
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npm
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PyPI
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RubyGems
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