Aleksandr Teymurazov

Head of Quality Engineering

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Career Accomplishments

My journey began wearing every hat in the engineering org, from hands-on coding and DevOps scripting to architecting test automation frameworks, long before leadership became my focus. Over the past 15 years, I’ve steadily climbed the ladder from QA Manager to Development Manager, Director of Engineering, Executive Director of Engineering, and now Director of Quality Engineering. That unique arc, leading both development and quality teams, means I can still roll up my sleeves to debug production issues, author CI/CD pipelines, or design test automation, then switch roles seamlessly to mentor managers, shape strategy, and align C-suite vision with day-to-day execution.

Agile Transformation & TDD Rollout
When I led a division with over 200 developers spread across disparate teams, their two-week sprints were more like wishful thinking. I championed a shift to Scrum, coaching Product Owners, training Scrum Masters, and embedding ceremonies that drove accountability. Simultaneously, I introduced Test-Driven Development: the first few red–green–refactor cycles were awkward, but as engineers saw their code pass tests on every commit, morale and quality soared. Within six months, defect rates plummeted by 50% and release cadence sped up by 40% -- proof that cultural change, when paired with technical rigor, can transform delivery.

Dual Application Rewrites with Zero Downtime
Rewriting two flagship systems back-to-back taught me that high-stakes migrations can be engines of innovation, if you plan meticulously and never lose sight of the user.
At VerticalResponse, I faced a monolithic SaaS behemoth: the “VR Classic” email-marketing platform with every imaginable marketing feature, co-branding and white-label options baked in, and it processed multi-million-contact lists and billions of email messages each day. When I took charge of the ground-up rewrite to VR2, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. My challenge was twofold: deliver full feature parity (and often enhancements) and match or exceed the legacy system’s blistering performance. The timeline was razor-thin, complicated further by an impending M&A integration with Deluxe Corp.
To meet these demands, I broke the project into highly focused work streams: one team tracked down every critical VR Classic feature, another designed the new Rails-based micro-services for core functions, and a third stress-tested data pipelines for massive scale. I orchestrated “parallel runs,” routing a small percentage of live traffic to the new system each day to validate behavior against the legacy platform. Performance became our North Star: by leveraging optimized database sharding, intelligent background-job queuing, and in-memory caching, VR2 achieved equal or better throughput under full load.
When D-Day arrived, we flipped the switch with zero downtime. Users enjoyed the same rich feature set, plus improvements like 20% faster list uploads and segmentation and a streamlined email-creation workflow, without ever noticing a hiccup. That success wasn’t just technical it was proof that, even under merger pressure and data-volume extremes, strategic planning, phased rollouts, and relentless performance tuning can turn a rewrite from a risk into a competitive leap forward.
Soon after, I tackled Shutterfly’s content-creator workflow rewrite, a complex dance of media uploads, image transformations, and real-time previews for thousands of seasonal templates. The old workflows was brittle: image uploads queued for minutes, transformations stalled during peak season, and metadata inconsistencies led to customer frustration. I reimagined the entire flow as event-driven micro-services: user uploads triggered asynchronous processing in a cluster, metadata was normalized via a serverless API layer, and previews were cached at the CDN edge. Throughout a phased rollout, I monitored real-user metrics and fine-tuned each service until every image loaded under two seconds, even at 10× peak volume. We flipped production traffic without a hitch, and post-launch surveys showed a 30% uptick in user satisfaction with the new creator experience.

In both rewrites, zero downtime wasn’t just a goal—it was the baseline. By dividing risks into bite-sized sprints, validating each slice in production, and obsessing over performance, I turned mammoth migrations into seamless upgrades that delighted users and positioned the business for future growth.

Post M&A Unifications: Deluxe & Shutterfly
At Deluxe, I took the merger of VerticalResponse, Hostopia, WebBuilder, LogoMix, and MyCorporation and turned five engineering silos into one “One Deluxe” Engineering organization. I drafted a unified SDLC playbook, built a shared CI/CD pipeline, and standardized code review policies, resulting in a 20% lift in feature throughput within months. Later at Shutterfly, I faced five QA teams operating in isolation across Shutterfly Consumer, Business, Lifetouch, SnapFish, and Spoonflower. I created a “Quality Intelligence” organization, deploying an AI-powered test-case generator that adapted to code changes and an impact-analysis engine that recommended which tests to run. Manual testing hours collapsed by 90%, release cycles shrank by 35%, and the unified QE team delivered 50% more validated stories each sprint.

Driving Cohesive, Innovation-Driven Engineering
Whenever teams splintered or momentum lagged, I personally convened stakeholders [product, design, Ops, QA] to align on a shared vision. I led tool-selection workshops, prototyped AI-augmented workflows for tasks like log anomaly detection, and rolled out iterative PoCs that demonstrated immediate ROI. By weaving together strategy, hands-on execution, and continuous feedback, I transformed fragmented groups into cohesive, innovation-driven engines, empowering them to ship faster, fail fast, and learn continuously.

Pioneering AI-Driven Quality Automation
Anticipating the limits of manual script-writing, I spearheaded an AI test-generation program that scanned our codebase, produced targeted test cases, and classified results with machine-learned models. Within three months, overall test coverage jumped by 30% and the system flagged the riskiest code areas before developers even committed code changes. QA engineers reclaimed hundreds of hours otherwise spent on repetitive tasks, focusing instead on exploratory testing and UX edge cases—raising product confidence and accelerating our delivery pipeline.

Technical Due Diligence for Strategic M&A
When Deluxe Corp eyed the acquisition of MyCorporation, I stepped in as the lead technical advisor—tasked with dissecting their entire technology landscape. I conducted hands-on reviews of their IP portfolio, infrastructure topology, and application architecture, uncovering scalability limits in their monolithic services and security gaps in their data-processing pipelines. I ran targeted compliance audits, verifying HIPAA readiness and PCI controls and mapped integration touch points against our “One Deluxe” platform. My executive summary distilled these deep findings into a clear risk matrix, outlining necessary refactoring efforts, migration paths, and tight timelines. Armed with that guidance, C-suite leaders negotiated favorable terms, built a phased integration plan, and avoided surprise costs, ensuring MyCorporation’s assets and teams slid seamlessly into Deluxe’s ecosystem.

If you’re looking for a seasoned technology leader to elevate your engineering organization’s performance and drive innovation at scale, I’d welcome the opportunity to discuss how my blend of hands-on execution, strategic vision, and AI-driven processes can help your teams ship faster, smarter, and with greater confidence. Let’s connect.

Education

Education

San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University

BS Computer Information Systems | 1995 - 2003

Scrum Alliance

Scrum Alliance

Certified Scrum Master. Certificate ID: 001100272 | 2020

International Institute for Software Testing

International Institute for Software Testing

Certified Software Test Professional (CSTP) | 2004

Experience

Experience

Shutterfly

December 2020 - Present

http://shutterfly.com
Director, Quality Engineering and Automation
 —  December 2020 - Present

When I joined Shutterfly in December 2020, I inherited five independent Quality teams—SnapFish, Lifetouch, Spoonflower, Shutterfly Business, and Shutterfly Consumer, each operating with its own processes, tools, and priorities. I immediately set out to transform those silos into a single, high-performance machine. Over several months, I personally designed and executed a unified Quality Engineering organization: I restructured product-aligned teams under a central Quality function and created a brand new Core Automation team that focused on delivering common frameworks, metrics, and tooling across every brand.

With the new structure in place, 120 quality and automation engineers strong, and three direct managers reporting into me, I turned my attention to building a rolling capacity-planning model in close collaboration with Product, Engineering, and Finance. I translated strategic objectives into headcount forecasts, budget allocations, and release timelines. Each quarter, I scoped initiatives, mapped dependencies, and locked in budgets to guarantee every feature release and client onboarding hit its target.

Next, I revamped our CI/CD pipeline by embedding modern test automation—unit, integration, and performance—into every stage. That initiative slashed manual testing time by 90% and accelerated deployments by 35%. Throughout, I maintained direct channels with Customer Success and Product teams, gathering real-world feedback to refine our tools, resolve pain points, and elevate the end-user experience.

I then hunted down operational inefficiencies. One process in particular, I automated the monthly capital-expense close, replacing a tedious manual process of data pulls and reconciliations with a one-click suite of SQL scripts and Excel macros, cutting effort by 80% and saving over 20 hours per month for finance and operations.

In just eighteen months under my leadership, the reorganized QE org did more than survive rapid growth and platform upgrades. It delivered $500K in annual cost savings, increased test execution capacity by 40%, and, most importantly, forged a culture of shared ownership. Today, Shutterfly thrives on a scalable, repeatable quality model that speaks a single language of metrics, collaboration, and continuous improvement.  

July 2013 - Present October 2020

http://deluxe.com
Executive Director of Engineering, SBS
 —  February 2018 - Present October 2020

Upon my promotion to Executive Director of Engineering at Deluxe, I balanced hands-on innovation with strategic leadership—and plenty of air miles. I pitched and launched an internal incubator focused on distributed data processing, hand-selecting a two-engineer team to architect a scalable Data Management Platform that handled billions of records and generated over $15 million in new revenue in under three years.

Simultaneously, I unified our engineering landscape by consolidating multiple product teams onto the “One Deluxe” platform—standardizing development practices and rolling out a shared CI/CD workflow that cut release friction and boosted collaboration. By renegotiating tool and license agreements across the merged organizations, I drove over $350,000 in annual cost savings, freeing budget to reinvest in innovation.

On the M&A front, I served on Deluxe’s corporate leadership team, leading technical due diligence for the MyCorporation acquisition—deep-diving into IP, infrastructure, application architecture, and development processes to assess scalability, security, and integration risk. My insights empowered executives to complete the deal smoothly and integrate the business without disruption.

This role also required 30–40% travel. I frequently flew to Toronto for Product-Engineering offsites with the Hostopia team and annual Executive Strategy sessions for Deluxe Small Business. I also visited our WebBuilder engineering hub in Sofia, Bulgaria, to align on roadmap priorities and ensure our global teams stayed in sync. Through every challenge—whether coding platform enhancements, negotiating vendor contracts, or briefing the C-suite—I demonstrated that visionary engineering leadership can fuel both growth and efficiency.

 —  August 2015 - Present February 2018

Upon being promoted to Director of Engineering, I took the helm of four distinct product teams—VerticalResponse, Hostopia, Website Builder, and LogoMix—and set out to unify their workflows and drive measurable impact. My first priority was slashing our time-to-production: by introducing automated deployment pipelines and embedding agile best practices, I cut release cycles by 40%, allowing new features to reach customers faster and with greater confidence.

Simultaneously, I tackled a nagging finance headache: manual capital-expense reporting. I architected an end-to-end automation solution that extracted data from our financial systems, validated it through scripted checks, and generated compliant reports in minutes—eliminating error-prone spreadsheets and freeing analysts to focus on strategic planning.

To ensure all teams moved in lockstep, I standardized our SDLC processes, tooling, and frameworks—rolling out a shared suite of CI/CD templates, code-quality gates, and backlog-management guidelines. That consistency boosted development velocity by 20% and drove down production incidents. Finally, I negotiated enterprise-wide licensing agreements for GitHub and Atlassian tools, consolidating contracts across teams and saving 20% in OPEX.

Through these initiatives, I not only scaled engineering output across multiple product lines but also embedded a culture of efficiency, transparency, and continuous improvement. 

 —  July 2013 - Present August 2015

When Deluxe Corp acquired VerticalResponse, I stepped into the newly created role of Software Engineering Manager—charged with transforming the legacy “ VR Classic” platform into the next-generation VR2. With Ruby on Rails gaining momentum, I architected and led a full rewrite under razor-tight deadlines: my team rebuilt core functionality, integrated PCI compliance requirements for credit-card processing, and secured HIPAA readiness—all while racing to meet our merger timetable.

I assembled and mentored a cross-functional squad of full-stack, QA, automation, and DevOps engineers, defining microservices boundaries and guiding them through agile sprints. As we rolled out VR2’s distributed architecture, I also designed a data-analysis framework that stress-tested pipelines against billions of records—ensuring reliability at scale.

By launch, VR2 delivered a 50% boost in platform scalability and email-delivery performance, and passed all PCI audits on the first submission. Stepping up from QA Manager into this engineering leadership position, I proved that even under acquisition pressure, clear vision and relentless execution can turn monumental challenges into lasting success. 

January 2009 - Present July 2013

http://verticalresponse.com
QA / Test Automation Manager
 —  August 2010 - Present July 2013

At VerticalResponse, I quickly moved from Senior QA Engineer into the QA Manager seat—entrusted with shaping quality strategy across the entire company. Early on, I championed Test-Driven Development, personally authoring an end-to-end automated test suite that unlocked deployments two to three times per week. To keep pace, I built a parallelized Continuous Integration workflow: what once took 4½ hours of sequential tests now ran in just 30 minutes, multiplying our test capacity fivefold. I set a team goal of 90% coverage for our mission-critical components and designed the test framework to reach it, catching bugs before they ever hit production. Finally, I architected a GitHub branching strategy that let multiple feature streams progress in parallel—eliminating merge nightmares and boosting developer productivity company-wide. Together, these efforts transformed VerticalResponse’s release cadence and laid a foundation for scalable, reliable software delivery.

 —  August 2009 - Present August 2010

Joining VerticalResponse was my first role landed entirely on my own—no network referrals or professor introductions to lean on—so I walked in with zero internal contacts and a determination to prove myself. I dove headfirst into the Quality Assurance team, writing test cases by day and learning the product’s every edge by night. Within weeks, I saw an opportunity to raise the bar: I architected the company’s very first automated testing framework from scratch, laying the groundwork for a repeatable, scalable QA process. As that framework took shape, I designed comprehensive regression suites that drove a 60% drop in production defects—feedback loops that saved wasted hours and shored up customer confidence. My close partnership with developers smoothed release handoffs, and I became the go-to person for tough bug hunts and process improvements. In just eight months, that momentum carried me from hands-on tester to QA Manager, where I continued shaping our quality culture and mentoring the next wave of QA engineers.

October 2007 - Present August 2009

https://www.deepdyve.com
Principal Test Engineer
 —  October 2007 - Present August 2009

At Infovell, I took ownership of the end-to-end testing and deployment of the company’s WebSearch Engine—an ambitious project that required optimizing both content crawling and indexing to deliver fast, accurate results. I instituted a robust quality-engineering framework, defining processes that flagged reliability risks early and drove efficiency across the team. To further bolster our coverage and performance, I designed and rolled out innovative test-automation strategies—leveraging shell scripting and CI/CD pipelines—to catch edge-case failures before they ever reached production. The result was a search engine that not only scaled with growing data volumes but consistently met stringent uptime and response-time targets. 

August 2002 - Present September 2007

http://ipass.com
Automation Test Lead
 —  August 2002 - Present September 2007

At iPass, I recognized that our manual testing backlog was creating critical bottlenecks, so I designed and implemented a SilkTest-based automation framework that slashed manual QA effort by 70%. I personally owned the end-to-end integration testing process—defining API and backend test suites, orchestrating performance benchmarks, and refining build-deployment scripts to accelerate release cycles. To keep stakeholders informed, I overhauled our reporting pipeline: automating data collection and visualization to deliver real-time dashboards that guided prioritization and decision-making. These initiatives not only boosted our release cadence but also ensured the stability and scalability of our global connectivity platform. 

October 2000 - Present April 2002

https://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2002/04/15/daily50.html
Software QA Team Lead
 —  October 2000 - Present April 2002

At OnePage, I was tasked with transforming our release cycle into a predictable, quality-driven engine. I began by crafting and rolling out a comprehensive QA strategy—defining test plans, coverage goals, and automation roadmaps—that lifted our regression coverage by over 50% and caught more defects earlier in the cycle. To scale that vision, I built and mentored an offshore QA team, establishing daily stand-ups and pairing sessions that blended integration testing with automated suites. Together, we replaced manual handoffs with continuous feedback loops and self-serving dashboards, accelerating releases without sacrificing quality. My hands-on approach—leveraging PHP for backend validation, database sniffers for data integrity, and custom scripts for automation—ensured every product milestone shipped with confidence. 

July 1999 - Present October 2000

http://sabasoftware.com
Sr. SQA Engineer
 —  July 1999 - Present October 2000

At Saba Software, I stepped into a pivotal role overseeing integration testing and automation for the company’s flagship enterprise applications. From day one, I recognized that our sprawling Learning Management and Talent suite—comprising modules for course delivery, performance management, and analytics—needed a cohesive testing strategy. I partnered with Product and Development leads to map out critical end-to-end workflows, then architected an automated integration test framework using Selenium WebDriver and REST-based API scripts.

Building on that foundation, I wove those tests into our continuous integration pipeline, so every code check-in triggered a full regression pass against dozens of user scenarios. What had once taken three days of manual effort now ran overnight, catching edge-case failures early and giving developers fast feedback. I worked closely with our data-engineering team to feed synthetic user data into test runs, ensuring our scenarios closely mirrored production realities.

To keep everyone aligned, I introduced a weekly “Quality Metrics” review, presenting dashboards that tracked pass/fail trends, test coverage, and defect density. Those insights guided our prioritization—whether tuning a new API endpoint or hardening our OAuth flows—and helped the team reduce post-release incidents by 45% over six months. Throughout, I mentored junior engineers on test architecture best practices and led bi-weekly automation workshops, embedding a culture of quality and continuous improvement across the organization. 

March 1998 - Present July 1999

http://oracle.com
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
 —  March 1998 - Present July 1999

At Oracle, I saw an opportunity to elevate our enterprise applications’ stability by embedding automation deep into the testing lifecycle. I authored Java-based automated test suites—leveraging JDBC for backend data validation and JSP-driven UI scripts—that executed end-to-end scenarios across complex workflows. By integrating these tests into our nightly builds, I caught critical defects before they reached QA, significantly boosting product reliability and accelerating release confidence. My work laid the groundwork for a culture of continuous quality, where automated checks became an integral part of every development sprint. 

June 1997 - Present March 1998

http://www.cats.com
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
 —  June 1997 - Present March 1998

Joining CATS Software straight out of school was my first immersion into the tech world—and it felt like stepping onto a rocket ship. I started as a hands-on tester on their proprietary risk-management platform, diving into requirements documentation and mapping out complex use cases for financial institutions. My days were spent meticulously crafting and executing test cases—manually validating calculation engines, stress-testing data imports, and verifying UI workflows under shifting market conditions.

Early on, I noticed that our regression cycles were eating up valuable release time. On my own initiative, I wrote simple scripts to automate repetitive test steps, cutting down manual effort and freeing the team to focus on deeper exploratory testing. I also instituted a daily “bug scrub” ritual: gathering developers, product managers, and support engineers to triage issues, prioritize fixes, and align on the next day’s test targets. That collaborative cadence not only improved our defect turnaround but also built strong cross-functional trust.

By the end of my first year, I had expanded my remit beyond execution to owning quality processes: defining entry and exit criteria for releases, mentoring junior testers on best practices, and presenting test-coverage metrics in weekly leadership reviews. Those experiences laid the foundation for every subsequent role—teaching me how curiosity, persistence, and early automation can transform a fledgling QA effort into a strategic advantage.  

Insight

Insight

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Aleksandr Teymurazov
Head of Quality Engineering

alex@datahum.com    |   

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