Trish Putnam

Building practical software and continuing selective consulting in quality engineering, automation, and technical delivery. Leading human–AI development work with explicit scope, independent review, and release decisions grounded in evidence. Using that work to explore how people and AI agents collaborate, and sharing what I learn through writing.

Explore selected work

Led a distributed software engineering team spanning onshore and offshore colleagues across multiple time zones, supporting six AWS initiatives with responsibility for delivery, team development, and a $6.5M annual budget. Established quality engineering practices and improved engineering output by 25%. Led planning for legacy modernization and cloud migration, working through the technical and delivery implications of moving from COBOL and RPG to Python and Java.

Led a distributed quality engineering practice serving a Fortune 100 client, growing it from 12 to approximately 30–32 people across five project teams spanning onshore and offshore locations and multiple time zones. Owned client relationships, hiring, budget, and delivery, working with team leads to improve planning and organize people around their strengths. Led QA delivery for a new product and approximately 15 releases in one year, on schedule and under budget. Restructured the practice and its operating cadence, securing a renewal with additional projects and expanded funding.

Built and led the QA, SDET, and DevOps organization for a software company powering private health insurance exchanges. Directed quality and release work spanning billing and payments, identity integration, and a major enrollment-platform re-architecture. Created career paths for technical specialists and managers, with a framework HR adopted as a model for other departments. Secured dedicated DevOps capacity and led improvements that shortened deployments, reduced defects reaching customers, and helped turn around an at-risk customer relationship.

Led technical program delivery for health-insurance initiatives, including a major Medicare initiative as Premera expanded its offerings. Owned integrated plans, cross-team dependencies, risks, and delivery commitments, coordinating testing strategy and release readiness. Led Selenium and Cucumber automation initiatives supporting ten Agile Scrum teams, expanding coverage and reducing repetitive manual work, and contributed to leadership reporting on quality and delivery.

Led three distributed QA teams supporting AT&T’s e-commerce platform, new product rollouts, and test tooling and automation. Directed validation of customer transactions and the APIs behind them, with responsibility for quality strategy, hiring, and technical release readiness. As one of three QA managers, drove improvements in quality practices across the broader organization. Built the case for the e-commerce group’s first QA test lab, secured executive funding, and led its establishment.

Progressed from Microsoft.com into Search testing, then into SharePoint’s Assistance Platform, retaining responsibility for Search-focused testing, particularly performance and stress testing, through the transition. Built test automation and led test execution for Microsoft.com releases, then owned deployment and configuration testing within the SharePoint work. Alongside those engineering responsibilities, managed a mission-critical service migration from business justification and planning through execution, acceptance, and postmortem.