Shilpa Balagopalan (She/Her)

CTO

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India21 yrs 7 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Co-founded Women in Tech to empower women leaders.
Led multi-million dollar projects in global retail.
Expert in Agile transformation and quality assurance.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a seasoned leader in Tech and Retail, specializing in project management and quality assurance.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

LeadershipProject ManagementQuality

Other Skills

Agile methodologiesAgile processCoachingJAVALean Six SigmaMarTechQA/SREQuality AssuranceRuby on RailsUAT testingagile methodologiesagile processbrand repositioningbranding campaignscoaching

About

Growing up in a family where the job took us across the country, my schooling across the length and breadth of India immersed in the diversity of its cultures. The curiosity and strength derived from these formative years has become a hallmark of my professional career with a bias for execution and consistently providing the confidence and leadership necessary for complex programs executed by multidisciplinary global teams. Continued my education in the United States. After completing my Masters in Communication and specializing in Information Technology, worked in the United States for about 8 years before relocating back to India where I worked for Global retail corporations. Throughout my professional career, I have nurtured a particular commitment for mentoring and coaching women to have a fulfilling life while pursuing their leadership aspirations. Co-founded Women in Tech in India at Hudson’s Bay and in that capacity was instrumental in creating a support system as women negotiate their transition into the fast-growing diversity in the workspace of the country. My professional experience in Information Technology, Quality and Process, my bias towards execution, my global experience and a passionate understanding and commitment for women has provided me with the launchpad I need to craft the future of the retail revolution being reinvented across the world.

Experience

Lululemon

Technology leader

Aug 2021 – Present · 4 yrs 7 mos · Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India

building digital capabilities in India Technology Hub- upper funnel, lower funnel, MarTech, QA/SRE, cyber security, Merch ops and partner in delivery
Instrumental in setting up the Women in Tech
Assist in team setup, talent acquisition and retention
Branding campaigns and events to accelerate hiring
Partner with Tech Business and operations team to enable both global India specific activities
Assist People and Culture, ops, finance ops & legal

digital capabilitiesMarTechQA/SREcyber securitytalent acquisitionbranding campaigns+2

Hudson's bay company

Director - Quality Assurance

Jul 2019 – Aug 2021 · 2 yrs 1 mo · Greater Bengaluru Area

Responsible for the product roll out of mission critical projects across global locations and women empowerment leader:
Ensuring delivery efficiency for final sign off before roll out
Leading the rollout of the cobranded Loyalty program as part of the over all repositioning of the brand for the new generation of retail
Migration of the IT infrastructure of three brands to Sales Force Commerce Cloud while ensuring continuity of service in 6 months ahead of schedule
Cofounder of Women in Tech India - create a support system to coach women leaders for seamless transition into new responsibilities
Member of CSR and Women in Power committees

Quality Assuranceproject roll outmigrationwomen empowermentQualityProject Management

Jifflenow

Senior Engineering Program Manager

Nov 2015 – Jul 2019 · 3 yrs 8 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Cross functional delivery manager and change coach
End to end delivery of key projects pertaining to migrating to new platform (Ruby on Rails and JAVA) to support flagship Business to Business events like Mobile World Congress, Consumer Electronics Show and HIMMS (health care). The platform was used by over 120 fortune 500 companies
Design and implement agile culture, process, tools, teams and delivery to ensure teams navigate through the transition from waterfall without impact to execution and delivery
Transition to a data driven product planning strategy across all product lines using tools such as Salesforce Helpdesk and JIRA

cross functional deliveryagile processdata driven strategyProject ManagementQuality

Target

Project Manager

Jan 2012 – Nov 2015 · 3 yrs 10 mos · India and US

Cross functional Program delivery and testing leader
Designed and delivered multi million dollar chip and pin program across all US stores. This program impacted 70+ applications and more than 120 teams including but not limited to stores, legal, card printing, legal documentation, development, support, implementation.
Transformation of the testing processes to create efficiency of implementation Point of Sales code to all stores - this reduced testing cycles by about 50% to enable teams to deliver faster to market
Holiday support planning which includes setting up SWAT rooms for monitoring and performance of the health of stores during peak sales and reduce any impact to sales due to technology glitches

program deliverytesting processesholiday support planningProject Management

Wkfs

Project Manager and Testing

Mar 2006 – Dec 2011 · 5 yrs 9 mos

Testing leader, Process champion, Lean six sigma Green belt
Lead the core team to create and pilot Agile process in the IT team, created training materials and rolled out across the transformation to agile across multiple Wolters Kluwer Businesses
Help short list and finalize Team Foundation Server to support the transformation of the organization
Certified in Lean Six Sigma Green Belt by completing an project in testing to reduce regression testing of our core applications by 80% which enabled team to identify issues sooner and rectify before larger delivery to customers across the country

Agile processLean Six SigmatestingQualityProject Management

Us bank

SQC Engineer

Jun 2005 – Mar 2006 · 9 mos

Key Accomplishments
Led teams across locations
worked with bank cashiers to resolve real time issues with end users
Led UAT testing strategy which involved business users from across the organization

UAT testingissue resolution

Apple vaccations (client) ibm

SQC Engineer

Jan 2005 – Jun 2005 · 5 mos

Key Accomplishments
Analyzed requirements, prepared test plan using Rational Test Manager and built comprehensive test suites in Rational Robot.
Led a process improvement initiative with automation SME to create end to end regression test plan where 80% of our most used functionality were automated. This freed up our manual testers to do exploratory testing and find more defects before the product went to customers

test planningprocess improvement