Magen Naidoo

Software Delivery & Product Management

Resource Allocation: Oversaw resource allocation for software development projects to ensure optimal use of resources and timely completion of milestones.

Project Management: Directed the development of multiple projects concurrently, maintaining control over various deliverables and development trajectories.

Release Management: Handled software release cycles through meticulous planning, coordination, and communication.

Deployment Procedures: Enhanced deployment procedures by automating build pipelines and emphasizing code quality.

Methodology Refinement: Refined software development methodologies by forming cross-functional teams.

Code Quality: Secured significant enhancements in code quality by embracing continuous integration and delivery practices.

Defect Minimization: Minimized production defects by prioritizing quality within the CI Pipeline.

Project Success: Facilitated the successful completion of several high-profile projects, receiving client accolades for surpassing expectations.

Data-Driven Decisions: Employed data analytics to guide decision-making, resulting in more tactical project prioritization.

Incident Response: Addressed critical production issues swiftly and efficiently by spearheading incident response initiatives.

Clients & Stakeholder Management

Technical Communication: Explained technical details to clients and stakeholders, focusing on how solutions addressed their business problems. Utilized whiteboard sessions to enhance understanding of architecture, product, and user journeys.

Trust Building: Built trust with clients and stakeholders by consistently delivering on commitments. Maintained weekly engagements to ensure alignment between priorities and work being done. Included team members in sessions to foster a deeper understanding of the customer.

Stakeholder Coordination: Coordinated, aligned, and communicated with various stakeholders. Developed strategies based on the level of information required for each stakeholder.

Project Tracking: Worked with a project manager to track overall project progress and delivery dates, providing weekly project status updates. Led complex projects involving multiple development teams, ensuring alignment through a scrum of scrums.

Ongoing Engagement: Maintained ongoing engagement with stakeholders, including customers, to guarantee that projects and products align with and address business requirements effectively.

Conflict Resolution: Resolved conflicts arising from differing priorities between myself and clients. Leveraged strong relationships to reach compromises.

Technical Translation: Explained technical solutions to non-technical stakeholders, effectively translating how solutions meet business needs and resolving doubts and conflicts.

Issue Resolution: Resolved escalated issues to ensure timely delivery and maintain excellent relationships.

Collaborative Prioritization: Worked collaboratively with clients to prioritize deliverables that meet their needs and continuously enhance the product, both technically and in terms of features.

Urgent Issue Management: Managed issues with appropriate urgency, including resolution and communication with stakeholders.

Customer Feedback: Engaged with customers to verify satisfaction and integrate feedback on in-process development projects.

Team Management and Accountability

Leadership and Mentorship: Led a team of engineers to deliver high-quality software solutions promptly, ensuring customer satisfaction and business growth. Mentored junior software engineers, offering guidance and support to foster their professional development.

Feedback and Performance Reviews: Regularly provided feedback to both junior engineers and senior leadership on performance metrics and observations. Conducted performance reviews to identify improvement areas and implemented strategies to address them.

Recruitment and Resource Management: Drove recruiting new staff when necessary and managed both direct and indirect reports. Ensured the team was well-resourced and that members possessed the necessary skills for current and future projects.

Training and Development: Developed individual training and career development plans for each team member. Facilitated ongoing performance development discussions, driving actions to support team members’ growth and their contributions to the team and company culture.

Coaching and Alignment: Provided mentoring and coaching to team members on a weekly basis, ensuring alignment with company strategy and goals.

Behavior and Accountability: Emphasized the importance of behavior as the foundation of team dynamics. Held team members accountable for their actions and performance, ensuring a positive and productive work environment.

Reporting: Regularly updated my manager on team performance, product, and project progress.

Continuous Improvement

Enhanced Team Productivity: Increased overall team productivity through continuous process improvement initiatives and effective resource allocation.

Process Optimization: Continuously reviewed processes, including inner sourcing, to maximize team and company-wide efficiencies, incorporating software engineering maturity best practices.

Quality and Effectiveness: Aimed to improve software quality and team effectiveness through ongoing assessments and refinements.

Release Cadence and Quality: Improved the quality of releases and reduced release cadence. Actively tracked code coverage and consistently improved it as a team KPI.

Industry Best Practices: Stayed abreast of market best practices in software engineering to identify and implement opportunities for improvement.

Acting SEM Payments

Team Management:

Backlog Prioritization & Planning: Strategically prioritized and planned backlogs to align with business goals and project timelines.

Bottleneck Resolution: Proactively identified and removed bottlenecks/blockers to enhance team productivity and efficiency.

Stakeholder Bridging: Acted as a liaison between business and technical stakeholders to ensure seamless communication and understanding.

Risk Mitigation: Developed and implemented comprehensive risk mitigation plans to safeguard project success.

Lifecycle Accountability: Held full accountability for the software engineering lifecycle, ensuring adherence to best practices and standards.

Capacity Management: Effectively managed team capacity to balance workload and optimize resource utilization.

Stakeholder Management:

Priority Alignment: Drove stakeholder engagement to ensure alignment of priorities and expectations.

Continuous Improvement: Fostered a culture of continuous improvement through regular stakeholder feedback and engagement.

Issue Resolution: Efficiently resolved escalated issues to maintain software quality and stakeholder satisfaction.

Urgency Management: Managed issues with appropriate urgency, ensuring timely resolution and communication.

Defining and Tracking Goals:

OKR Setting & Tracking: Established and tracked Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to align team efforts with strategic goals.

Strategic Alignment: Ensured day-to-day activities were aligned with long-term strategic objectives.

Daily Team Management:

Stand-Up Meetings: Conducted daily stand-up meetings to track progress and address any immediate concerns.

Progress Tracking: Monitored and reported on team progress to ensure transparency and accountability.

Team Effectiveness:

Accountability Building: Cultivated a culture of accountability within the team, driving high performance and ownership.

Technical Team Lead for Speed - Banking

Achievements:

Speed Banking Optimization: Transformed banking operations from a major bottleneck to a negligible load, resulting in a 4x increase in concurrent user capacity.

Client-Side Load & Performance Framework: Pioneered the introduction of a cloud-based client-side load and performance framework using Kubernetes, enhancing scalability and performance testing capabilities.

Banking Limits Overhaul: Reengineered decades-old banking limits logic into a modern, scalable service layer within 2 months, significantly improving performance and extensibility.

Client-Side Caching Implementation: Introduced client-side caching to reduce unnecessary backend requests, dramatically improving system performance and reducing outages.

Automated Testing Integration: Implemented automated testing in build and release pipelines, ensuring high-quality releases and adherence to the “leave the house cleaner” principle.

Mentorship & Growth: Successfully mentored two team members to achieve promotions, fostering professional development and growth.

Team Expansion & Management: Managed and coordinated a team that expanded to 22 members, ensuring effective collaboration and productivity.

Responsibilities:

Team Well-Being & Motivation: Maintained the well-being and motivation of the team through supportive leadership and clear communication.

Expectation & Goal Setting: Set clear expectations and stretch goals to drive team performance and growth.

Concurrent Stream Orchestration: Orchestrated multiple concurrent project streams, ensuring efficient workflow and resource allocation.

Process Definition: Collaboratively defined project processes with the team to ensure clarity and consistency.

Design Session Participation: Actively participated in design sessions to contribute to architectural and technical decisions.

Work Planning & Allocation: Planned and allocated work effectively to meet project deadlines and objectives.

Task Prioritization: Identified and prioritized tasks to ensure focus on high-impact activities.

Team Shielding: Shielded the team from interruptions to maintain focus and productivity.

Stakeholder Engagement: Engaged with internal and external stakeholders to bring them closer to the development lifecycle and ensure alignment.

Business-Technical Bridging: Bridged the gap between business and technical stakeholders to facilitate understanding and collaboration.

Responsibilities and Achievements:

Test Automation Implementation: Spearheaded the implementation of test automation processes, significantly reducing manual testing time and increasing overall efficiency.

Automation Framework Development: Designed and implemented robust automation frameworks, enabling scalable and maintainable automated testing solutions.

Automated Testing: Developed and executed automated QA test cases, scripts, and procedures, enhancing software maintenance and reliability.

Automation Methodology Optimization: Continuously optimized testing methodologies by integrating industry best practices and emerging automation technologies.

Comprehensive Test Planning: Developed comprehensive test plans and cases, resulting in thorough coverage of all software components.

Integration Testing: Led successful integration testing efforts, ensuring compatibility between different system components before deployment.

Root Cause Analysis: Conducted in-depth root cause analysis for critical defects, leading to more effective resolutions and prevention of future occurrences.

Workflow Optimization: Streamlined communication channels between QA teams, developers, and stakeholders, creating a more efficient workflow process.

Continuous Improvement: Facilitated continuous improvement initiatives by conducting regular process audits and recommending enhancements where needed.

Defect Tracking: Monitored defect tracking systems, enabling prompt resolution of reported issues and maintaining high-quality standards.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborated with cross-functional teams to establish project requirements, ensuring software met stakeholder expectations.

Code Review: Reviewed code changes submitted by developers, providing feedback on potential issues and assisting in the resolution of defects.

Software Reliability: Improved software reliability by consistently identifying and resolving bugs during the testing phase.

Mentorship: Served as a mentor for junior QA engineers, fostering professional development and growth within the team.

Quality Assurance Advocacy: Championed quality assurance best practices across the organization through presentations, workshops, and training sessions for team members from various departments.

Test Automation Framework Development: Created a robust test automation framework that significantly reduced time-to-test and improved overall testing efficiency.

Automated Test Implementation: Improved test coverage by implementing automated tests, ensuring comprehensive validation of software components.

Functional, Integration, Regression, and Performance Testing: Conducted thorough functional, integration, regression, and performance testing to ensure software quality and reliability.

End-to-End Testing: Performed end-to-end testing of web applications, ensuring all components and features functioned correctly across various environments.

Test Plan and Case Development: Developed detailed test plans, test cases, and test scripts for both manual and automated testing, ensuring thorough coverage of all requirements.

Comprehensive Test Strategy: Developed a comprehensive test strategy to ensure compliance with industry standards and best practices, enhancing the overall quality assurance process.

Bug-Tracking System Development: Designed and implemented a bug-tracking system to capture, report, and track software defects, facilitating efficient issue resolution.

Test Harnesses and Tools: Developed test harnesses and tools to facilitate the execution of automated tests, streamlining the testing process.

Test Reports and Metrics: Generated detailed test reports and metrics to measure the effectiveness of testing efforts and provide insights for continuous improvement.

Exploratory and Usability Testing: Conducted exploratory testing and usability testing to identify potential issues and enhance user experience.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborated with developers, business analysts, and other stakeholders to ensure software met all project requirements and stakeholder expectations.

Performance Testing: Utilized tools like JMeter to conduct performance testing, ensuring the system could handle high volumes of transactions and user load.

API Testing: Developed and executed API test cases using tools such as Postman and REST Assured, ensuring robust and reliable backend services.

Continuous Integration: Integrated automated tests into CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, enabling continuous testing and faster feedback loops.

Database Testing: Performed database testing using SQL to validate data integrity and consistency across various banking applications.

Security Testing: Conducted security testing to identify vulnerabilities and ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.

Mentorship: Provided guidance and mentorship to junior test engineers, fostering their technical skills and professional growth.

Quality Assurance Advocacy: Championed quality assurance best practices across the organization through presentations, workshops, and training sessions for team members from various departments.

Automated Routine Tasks: Developed and implemented automated scripts, reducing manual effort.

Code Refactoring: Refactored legacy code to reduce complexity and improve readability.

Security Logging System: Implemented a logging system to track user activity.

API Development: Created and deployed an API for integrating third-party services, which improved customer engagement.

Hands-On Testing Experience: Gained valuable hands-on experience in testing vehicle tracking units, focusing on both hardware and software components to ensure optimal performance and reliability.

Hardware Repair Skills: Developed essential hardware repair skills by addressing and resolving component-level issues, significantly contributing to maintaining product functionality and reducing downtime.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborated with cross-functional teams, enhancing teamwork and communication skills to identify and resolve defects, thereby improving overall product quality.

Industry Knowledge: Acquired a foundational understanding of the vehicle tracking industry, including relevant technologies, regulations, and market demands, positioning yourself as a knowledgeable asset to the team.

Problem-Solving Abilities: Enhanced problem-solving abilities by effectively diagnosing and resolving various hardware and software issues in vehicle tracking units, ensuring seamless operation.

Process Optimization: Assisted in streamlining testing processes and methodologies, optimizing efficiency and accuracy in detecting and resolving issues, which led to faster turnaround times.

Quality Assurance: Contributed to the successful delivery of high-quality vehicle tracking products, consistently meeting customer requirements and industry standards, demonstrating a commitment to excellence.