QA & Test Engineering

As a QA engineering director, Sheela Raju says her teams are focused on people, processes and technology, and no component is more important than the other. Prior to working at PNC, she did QA engineer consulting. After she joined PNC, her career grew and she flourished. Raju has been at the helm of QA testing for high-stakes periods of transition, spearheading QA testing for major systems conversions during two significant bank acquisitions. She believes QA engineers should maintain out-of-the-box thinking and be willing to stretch themselves. Her skills evolved so that she could become a quality advocate, process designer, risk manager, customer experience protector and partner in development as a QA engineer.

Paul Smock, a QA engineering manager who has been at PNC for 44 years, agrees. In his experience, an ideal QA engineer candidate is experienced in testing as well as technology. It’s the perfect pairing, but not a combination you commonly find. At PNC, he says you can come with a tech background, and we can teach you how to create that testing mindset. He started at PNC years ago, sorting checks for check processing and had the opportunity to navigate across a variety of roles, elevating from a supervisor to a manager. He was managing budgets when he discovered QA engineering and has stuck with it as he found the work both interesting and challenging.

Hemamalini Balasundaram, a QA engineering manager who has been at PNC for 11 years, encourages anyone interested in her tradecraft to explore both computer science and engineering. In her role, the focus is to support technology teams, so they can ultimately deliver software solutions. She balances collaboration, delivery, automation and governance, with the goal of achieving confidence that the teams deliver stable, reliable software. She says the key to her success is ensuring quality is a consideration during the entire software development lifecycle. To do so, QA engineers partner with developers and collaborate and communicate effectively with them about key challenges and opportunities. That way, quality is never an afterthought.