Independent Software QA Testing Services

Women in QA

Top 23 influential women ruling QA.

Introduction

Women have been acing in tech and there are many reasons as to why. This March we’re here to take a look at the most influential women in the world of testing and quality assurance.

The following phenomenal women are surely beaconing new voices in the erstwhile male dominated industry. These women are fierce and opinionated with a significant contribution to the world of technology in all aspects.

Listing the most remarkable women in the world of test.

Did you know?

Tech by far had remained overwhelmingly dominated by men over the last decades, with the widening gap in senior roles of a mere 20% female representation in executive leadership teams. The only way to bridge this gap is to highlight women’s successful roles as influential software testers, consultants, leaders, and entrepreneurs in the world of QA.

The women in the spotlight here have quite a few things in common: intelligence, experience, and a passion for QA. Some are even working mothers. Some were educated in a reputed university, whereas some learned firsthand skills on the job. Some are even influential founders and CEOs being a part of a global female workforce, even when working remotely for companies across countries and coming in with their unique perspectives, emotions, insights, and experiences.

As always a woman’s success should be an inspiration to other women and we’re the strongest when we cheer for each other.

Every year celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8th acknowledges the countless contributions women have made across many industries including QA.

This Women’s Day, we’re specially celebrating women cutting an edge in the world of Test.

Fun fact

Women in tech industries are setting an exemplary example for others in the sector. A recent study showed women comprising 28.8% of the tech workforce, with a stable rise in that curve happening over the past few years. Moreover, about 25% of GAFAM’s (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) employees are female.

For budding professionals starting their careers in software testing, here’s listing top 23 influential women  in QA who have made an impact to follow:

1 Beth Marshall

She is a senior test engineer who is making headlines in QA Alongside podcasting, tutorials, and various collaborations, she also speaks regularly at international online and offline conferences and events. She shares her stories straight from the QA front lines on her testing blog. She also took on the challenge to build a test automation portfolio sharing her progress on her blog and GitHub.

2 Maaret Pyhajarvi

She is currently working as a Principal Test Engineer at Vaisala. Her expertise includes creating skills to acquire relevant, on-time information about a product.
She is an expert in customer acceptance testing. She organizes and delivers testing in agile and traditional lifecycle models. A firm believer in exploratory testing and inculcates the passion of testing in young professionals.

3 Lisi Hocke

She works as an Expert Quality Engineer at Ada Health. Being a holistic tester, quality enabler, agile experimenter, and a sociotechnical symmathecist (one who learns with others in context). She believes that teamwork is the key to rapid growth.
Her blog, “A Tester’s Journey”, is a journal of her testing and conference activities for reference.

4 Marie Cruz

She is a quality engineering manager, Cypress ambassador, and co-organizer of the Cypress UK Community Meetup Group, connecting with testers and developers interested in learning more about Cypress. She frequently writes about testing and test automation being an accessibility advocate. She has also created a free accessibility testing tutorial to be more inclusive development and testing efforts.

5 Lisa Crispin

She is the co-founder, along with Janet Gregory, of the Agile Testing Fellowship, and is a consultant who helps teams identify and achieve their testing goals. She and Janet co authored the book “Agile Testing“, ranking as the most influential software testing books ever published.

6 Elisabeth Hendrickson

She is a dynamic veteran with 20 years of experience in the software industry. Working as the CTO and Founder for Curious Duck Digital Laboratory LLC, she focuses on core concepts of effective software development and delivery. Her tech journey startet in 1988 and shifted to Quality Assurance in 1993. Evolving from a tech writer to a founder has been an extraordinary journey for her, Her book ‘Explore It: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing’ is a testimony for every software tester wanting to improve their knowledge of what to test.

7 Sri Priya P Kulkarni

She is the senior Test Automation Specialist at IBM based in Bengaluru, India, starting as a QA automation engineer at Broadridge Financial Solutions before joining IBM as a full-time senior test automation specialist. She is active on Github, Twitter, and her blog, covering topics like dev life cycles, how to create superb test cases, and test case results analysis.

8 Karen Bark

A successful QA executive with more than a decade of management success across multiple industries. Having extensive experience in QA, product development lifecycle, and improving operations. She has helped in enhancing operational quality levels, customer satisfaction, and personnel performance. Armed with the compassing knowledge of all software development life cycle methodologies.

9 Kristel Kruustük

She is the Chief Testing Officer and Founder of Testlio. She had noticed the lack of quality software testers and massive frustration building around QA best practices. She and her partner, Marko, came up with an idea and pitched Testlio at the Angel Hack hackathon, winning the first prize and seed money. Today, Testlio is the leader of networked testing with a community of more than 10k software testers and 150+ global employees serving clients like NBA, Microsoft, CBS, etc.
In addition to Testlio, she is an angel investor supporting founders from underrepresented communities. Her first investment was ImagiLabs, an app that teaches girls and non-binary kids to code. She is based out of Tallinn, in Estonia.

10 Elisabeth Zagroba

She is the Quality Lead at Mendix. She reviews and contributes code to a Python test automation repository for 15+ teams building Mendix apps across three units.
She is a frequent panellist discussing test automation, exploratory testing, test reporting, QA tools, etc. She often tweets and blogs on Agile methodologies, unlocking feedback loops, and team and test lead strategies for success.
She is currently based in Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands.

11 Dawn Jardine

She is the Director of Quality at Rangle.IO. Debuting over 20 years ago, Jardine climbed the QA ladder one step at a time, starting as a test specialist to QA analyst, lead, manager, and then as a senior director role. She currently leads Rangle.IO’s quality assurance strategy and Agile quality practice. She regularly tweets, blogs, and consults on QA strategies, digital operating models, Agile QA methods, and gaining business wins through automation. Jardine is based in Toronto in Ontario Canada.

Parveen Khan
12 Parveen Khan

She is a senior test engineer and an international conference speaker who shares her stories and experiences in testing to inspire people around the globe. She believes delivering high-quality products is an invaluable responsibility. She loves collaborating with teams and optimizing processes, tools, and methodologies enabling the creation of high-quality products. She is often found speaking and writing about observability, agile transformation, and pairing with others to learn more about testing.

Aparna A Gopalakrishnan
13 Aparna Gopalakrishnan

She is a leading automation test expert, holding five international certifications, having years of consulting experience, she is helping world-leading firms with test automation, accessibility testing, and behavior-driven development. She is a motivational conference speaker, blogger, and instructor who also offers two free testing courses.

14 Sapana Gupta

A successful and highly skilled strategic advisor and software engineer who's passionate for Product Quality, Automation, Development and Release management/Support ( DevOps).

15 Rafaela. Azevedo

She is a full-stack SDET (software development engineer in test) with years of expertise in testing, test automation, and leadership. She is a STEM ambassador and a STEM women member making an impact and bringing more women representation to the STEM arema. She also speaks in reputed conferences on creating test strategies, writing about testing trends, and teaching about contract tests.

16 Nikita Patel

A seasoned IT professional with successful leadership experience in Project management, Quality engineering management, Test management inclusive of TDD BDD, business analysis and Advanced engineering management. Skilled in understanding business priorities, building strong communications at all levels and delivering solutions to achieve business objectives with customer focus at top of the list.

17 Kenyatta Williams

Over 2 decades of experience in the Software Testing & Engineering field. And a decade long knowledge of utilizing the Agile software/systems development methodology.

18 Janet Gregory

Janet Gregory is a Calgary based successful agile testing coach and process consultant with DragonFire Inc. She is also the co-author with Lisa Crispin of Agile Testing Condensed: A Brief Introduction (LeanPub 2019), More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team (Addison-Wesley 2014), and Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (Addison-Wesley, 2009). She specializes in mentoring agile teams on how testing activities are necessary to develop good quality products. She also works with teams transitioning to agile development and teaches agile testing courses worldwide.

19 Janet Chou

A dynamic result oriented IT professional with 20 decades of experience in software development and project management. She specializes in quality assurance and software project management using agile, scale agile, or traditional waterfall methodologies. She's also equally passionate about QC and process improvements. Her motto is - Bugs have no place to hide in my software!

20 Aditi Ray

A highly dynamic, QA Leader with 15 years of experience in techno-functional roles in Telecommunication, Retail/Consumer Goods, Insurance, Healthcare, Travel & Hospitality with profuse expertise of handling big teams across Onsite and Offshore. With an extensive knowledge and exposure in Project Management, Test Management and Quality Assurance and Control processes, Defect Management, Reporting, Project Estimation, Profitability Analysis, Resource Loading and Stakeholder management. Highly skilled in both waterfall and Agile methodologies for multiple years from inception to completion of projects. With prior experience in Web Based testing, Data Validation, ETL, POS testing,Mobile testing, Handheld device testing, Usability and Accessibility testing.

21 Erika Chestnut

She started as a software developer passionate about quality and found herself leaning more towards leading testing efforts. After years in the industry, she is now the head of quality assurance at Calendly and excels at creating quality strategies that support and are in return supported by businesses. She also shares her knowledge and expertise when she’s not busy keynoting conferences, she's busy coaching, mentoring, and consulting.

22 Priyanka Haldar

She is a leader in quality and delivery. Utilizing modern approaches for her teams with additions such as visual validation, test stabilization pipelines, and CI/CD for code deployments. She also loves sharing her expertise and experiences with others via blogs and her speaking engagements.

23 Kristin Jackvony

She is a principal engineer specializing in improving legacy software and supporting new software's earliest stages of development. Proficient in automated testing, especially API testing with Postman, as well as UI automation and manual exploratory testing. She is an avid writer sharing really insightful and practical thoughts in her blog titled, Think Like a Tester!

Final Thoughts

For upcoming future QA female professionals looking for some software testing inspiration for tips to success or building in a bootcamp, hopefully exploring the above resources offered by these talented women leaders software testing and QA was helpful.