QA Manager and senior quality leader, remote from Saint Johns, Florida

Quality walks the whole road.

I'm Mark Dordel, a seasoned QA leader who leads AI adoption in testing. I join your company for the whole journey, from the first council to the last watch, and strengthen every stage of your development lifecycle: sharper requirements, a test strategy that fits the risk, automation that lasts, and releases you can trust, with AI used responsibly to move faster at each step. I've done it in fast-shipping SaaS and in regulated healthcare.

See how I can help Get in touch

Your development lifecycle as a road across the map. Select a stage to see how I'd strengthen it.

Seasoned: QA leader across fast-shipping SaaS and regulated healthcare
AI-led: agentic AI adoption leadership in the QE space, under responsible-use guidelines
4: distributed teams whose testing I led in the Engage business suite
2: healthcare teams, in regulated and compliance-sensitive work

How I can help improve your SDLC

Every quest is won or lost on the road. I travel your whole lifecycle with you, from the first requirement to the last production fix, and strengthen the places where defects slip in and testing time is wasted.

AI adoption in QA

Stages II, III, IV and VI

I led the adoption of AI-assisted testing at Olo, and I can do the same for your team: choose the right tools, teach the prompting habits that work, and set responsible-use guidelines so speed never costs quality.

Faster test case creation
Less effort maintaining regression suites
Sharper defect analysis
Responsible-use guidelines your team can follow

Claude
ChatGPT
GitHub Copilot
Cursor
Azure OpenAI
Prompt engineering

Assess your current lifecycle

I walk your process with Product, Engineering and QA and show you where risk is highest and where effort is going to waste.

Every stage

QA strategy and test planning

A risk-based strategy, test plan and coverage model your team can run day to day.

Stages I and II

Test automation that lasts

Regression and API suites in Playwright, Cypress, Selenium or Postman, built so they stay maintainable as you grow.

Stage III

Release readiness and CI/CD

Clear readiness criteria and automated checks in your pipeline, so go or no-go stops being a debate.

Stages IV and V

Testing in regulated environments

Test management, traceable results and defect handling for compliance-sensitive workflows like healthcare.

Stages II and IV

Team leadership and coaching

I lead or coach your QA team, set testing standards, and grow the people doing the work.

Stages III and VI

How I'd join your company

Walk your roadLearn your product, team and release process. Review defects, test suites and how ship decisions get made.
Mark the dangersDeliver prioritized findings: where risk is highest and where testing effort is wasted.
Take the steepest passes firstStart with the changes that cut risk fastest, such as regression coverage, release criteria or automation.
Hand over the mapLeave standards, mentoring and documentation so your team keeps the gains.

Talk about your SDLC

Where I strengthen your lifecycle, stage by stage

Every stage of your SDLC is a place on the map where the quest can be won or lost. Here is what I change at each one, and where I've done it before.

Requirements

The Council, where the quest is agreed

Catch problems while they're still cheap to fix.

Ambiguous requirements turn into rework, missed edge cases and arguments about what was supposed to ship.

How I help

Review requirements for gaps, ambiguity and risk before development starts.
Get Product, Engineering and the business to agree on what "done" means.
Set quality goals and release readiness criteria with your leadership.

Where I've done it

Delivered

Quality goals and release readiness criteria, set with leadership (Kadince)
Coverage guidance for Engineering and Product (HealthX)

Problems solved

No agreed definition of release readiness (Kadince)
Requirements not fully met before release (HealthX)

Requirements analysis
Risk management
Stakeholder communication
Agile and Scrum

Plan and design

Rivendell, where the road and the company are chosen

A test strategy that fits your risk, not a generic checklist.

Teams end up testing what's easy instead of what's risky, and tooling gets chosen by habit.

How I help

Build a test strategy and plan around your highest-risk workflows.
Design test cases that trace back to requirements and cover the paths that matter.
Evaluate automation tools and give you a business case for the choice.

Where I've done it

Delivered

QA strategy, test plans and tooling direction (Wellbe)
Business case for Cypress and Selenium (Wellbe)
QA strategy across a distributed QA function (Olo)

Problems solved

Inconsistent QA practices across a team (Wellbe)
Tool choices made without a clear case (Wellbe)
Planning quality across a distributed team (Olo)

Test strategy
Test planning
Test case design
Tool evaluation

Build

The Mines of Moria, where the deep work gets done

Automation that pays off and stays maintainable.

Suites that flake, cover the wrong things or take too long to fix get abandoned, and the manual work comes back.

How I help

Build integration and regression suites across web and API surfaces.
Grow coverage while keeping maintenance sustainable.
Bring AI-assisted testing into your team's workflow, with responsible-use guidelines.

Where I've done it

Delivered

Integration and regression suites for web and API (Olo)
Automated suites for high-compliance workflows (HealthX)
Foundational JavaScript and Ruby suites for digital asset management (Widen)
AI-assisted testing adoption (Olo)

Problems solved

Growing coverage without a growing maintenance burden (Olo)
Slow test creation and regression upkeep (Olo)
Automation that had to meet regulatory standards (HealthX)

Playwright
Cypress
Selenium
Postman
JavaScript
TypeScript
Python
Ruby

Test

The Bridge, where nothing defective crosses

Evidence you can make a ship decision from.

When results don't say clearly what is risky, leaders are left guessing at release time.

How I help

Run functional, regression, API, integration and end-to-end testing, including complex multi-step workflows.
Validate data and defects, and manage the defect lifecycle from report to verified fix.
Report results so decision-makers can act on them.

Where I've done it

Delivered

Test cases, execution and results managed in TestRail (HealthX)
Full defect lifecycle: reporting, triage, verified fixes (HealthX)
Test coverage across web and API surfaces (Olo)

Problems solved

High-priority defects tracked across teams under tight deadlines (HealthX)
Complex healthcare workflows in a compliance-sensitive setting (HealthX)

Functional testing
Regression testing
API testing
Integration testing
End-to-end testing
Data validation
Defect validation

Release

The Great River, where the company sets out

Ship with a clear go or no-go.

Releases slip or ship blind when readiness lives in one person's head.

How I help

Define release readiness criteria and quality gates.
Wire automated tests into your CI/CD pipeline so readiness is visible without asking.
Support release testing across complex sandbox environments.

Where I've done it

Delivered

Automated tests integrated into CI/CD, plus a regression strategy (Olo)
Release readiness across complex sandbox environments (Olo)
Release readiness criteria, defined with leadership (Kadince)

Problems solved

High-stakes production deployments needing a clear quality call (Olo)
Testing across complex sandbox environments (Olo)

Release readiness
CI/CD pipelines
Test reporting
Sandbox environment management

Maintain

The Watch, where the road is kept open

Fewer production defects, and a suite that stays healthy.

After release, escaped defects and neglected regression suites quietly raise the cost of every change.

How I help

Reduce production defects by improving engineering and quality processes.
Keep regression suites maintained so they stay worth running.
Use defect analysis and customer feedback to decide what to test next.

Where I've done it

Delivered

Quality engineering, regression and automation practices across the organization (Kadince)
AI-assisted defect analysis and regression maintenance (Olo)
Quality improvements built from customer feedback (Widen)

Problems solved

Production defects (Kadince)
Usability gaps found with Customer Care (Widen)

Regression maintenance
Defect analysis
Customer feedback
Mentoring

Traveling alongside your team

At Kadince I lead a distributed team of quality engineers. I balance assignments across concurrent projects so delivery stays on track, and I look after each person's career growth.

At Olo I mentored a distributed team of QA engineers on automation frameworks, testing standards and best practices, and I led test automation direction for more than two years. Earlier, at Wellbe and Widen, I gave technical direction to QA contributors and mentored junior engineers.

I work the same way with Product and Engineering: explain the risk plainly, bring evidence, and agree on what ships.

Quality goals with executivesRelease readiness criteria, CI/CD integration and regression strategy.
Standards the team can followTesting standards and automation frameworks, taught through mentoring.
Decisions with a business caseTool choices at Wellbe were backed by a written case for each one.
Customer feedback as inputUsability gaps from Customer Care turned into quality improvements.

Gear for the road

Automation platforms

Playwright
Cypress
Selenium
Postman
REST API automation
CI/CD pipelines
TestRail
Jira

Automation languages

JavaScript
TypeScript
Python
Ruby

Leadership and direction

Test leadership
SDLC improvement
Distributed team management
Coaching
Test direction

Ready to strengthen how your team ships? Let's talk.

Tell me about your quest: what you're building and where the road gets rough. I'll tell you where I'd start.

dordelms@gmail.com View my CV