Sneha Singireddy, a distinguished Software Development Engineer in Testing, explores what it takes to build strong, test-driven systems that perform under pressure. She has over seven years of experience across insurance, healthcare, and retail tech, along with hands-on knowledge that goes beyond frameworks and tools.
Her work at CSAA Insurance Group is a clear example of how automation, smart test architecture, and agile thinking can boost performance and reliability. This interview explores Sneha’s career journey, her favorite tools, and the lessons she’s learned while pushing the boundaries of quality engineering. This interview also talks about strategies that work, stories that stick, and insights that come from deep technical experience.
Q1: Sneha, thank you for joining us today. You have more than seven years of experience across both manual and automated testing. How did your journey into software testing begin and grow with time, and what first made you interested in automation engineering?
Sneha Singireddy: My journey into software testing began over seven years ago, rooted in a passion for ensuring software reliability and user satisfaction. Initially, I focused on manual testing, where I developed a strong foundation in test design, defect reporting, and regression testing. However, I quickly realized the limitations of manual testing in fast-paced, iterative development environments. This realization sparked my interest in automation engineering. I was fascinated by how automation could enhance test coverage, increase efficiency, and support continuous delivery. Over time, I embraced tools like Selenium and Java, delved into performance testing, and built scalable test automation frameworks, continually evolving my skills to keep pace with modern DevOps and agile methodologies.
Q2: Your time at CSAA Insurance Group has involved building and scaling test automation frameworks using Java 11, Selenium, and Cypress. What was one of the most technically challenging aspects of creating these frameworks, and how did you overcome it?
Sneha Singireddy: One of the most technically challenging aspects of creating test automation frameworks at CSAA Insurance Group was integrating multiple tools, such as Java 11, Selenium, and Cypress, into a cohesive and maintainable testing strategy that could support both legacy systems and modern applications. Each tool had its own strengths, but aligning them with the project’s architectural needs while ensuring scalability and maintainability was complex.
To overcome this challenge, I adopted a modular framework design, which allowed the team to plug and play different tools based on the application under test. I also emphasized code reusability and adopted best practices such as page object modeling and custom wrapper libraries to streamline test creation. Additionally, I led knowledge-sharing sessions to onboard the team effectively and maintained comprehensive documentation to support long-term framework sustainability.
Q3: You’ve implemented performance testing using JMeter to identify and resolve application hold-ups. Can you walk us through a high-impact scenario where performance testing significantly influenced a project outcome?
Sneha Singireddy: Absolutely. At CSAA Insurance Group, we encountered a critical scenario where an internal claims processing application experienced severe latency under load, especially during peak hours. This issue posed a significant risk to business operations and user satisfaction.
I led the effort to implement performance testing using JMeter. We designed realistic test scenarios that simulated peak user activity, including concurrent claims submissions and real-time data validations. The tests revealed several bottlenecks, including inefficient database queries and poorly optimized service calls.
Armed with these insights, I collaborated with the development and infrastructure teams to optimize the database indexes and streamline backend logic. After implementing these improvements, we re-tested and observed a 60% reduction in response time and improved system stability under load. This proactive performance tuning helped the project meet its go-live deadline and boosted confidence in the application’s scalability.
Q4: In your role at CSAA, you mentioned utilizing WireMock to simulate various response codes and timeouts. How has this helped enhance your team’s ability to test under boundary and failure conditions, especially in distributed backend systems?
Sneha Singireddy: Using WireMock has been instrumental in enhancing our testing capabilities, particularly for distributed backend systems at CSAA Insurance Group. One of the biggest challenges in testing such systems is reliably simulating third-party services that can return various status codes or experience delays.
With WireMock, we were able to simulate a wide range of real-world scenarios, such as 500 internal server errors, 404 not found responses, and network timeouts, without depending on actual service availability. This allowed us to rigorously test our application’s behavior under adverse conditions and ensure robust error handling.
This approach significantly improved the reliability of our systems. We could proactively identify issues such as retry logic failures and improper error messaging early in the development cycle. It also empowered our QA team to validate edge cases consistently and gave developers a faster feedback loop during integration testing.
Q5: You highlight building CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and configuring Kubernetes clusters for containerized testing. How has this integration shaped your team’s testing strategy and contributed to agile delivery cycles?
Sneha Singireddy: Integrating CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and configuring Kubernetes clusters for containerized testing have been game-changers in advancing our agile delivery at CSAA Insurance Group. This setup enabled us to automate the entire testing workflow—from code commits to deployment—allowing for faster, more reliable releases.
With Jenkins, we orchestrated build, test, and deployment jobs that triggered automatically with each code change. We paired this with containerized test environments on Kubernetes, ensuring consistent, isolated test conditions that mirrored production. This eliminated the “it works on my machine” issue and reduced environment-related flakiness in test results.
Kubernetes also allowed us to scale our test infrastructure dynamically. For example, we could spin up parallel test nodes for regression suites, drastically cutting down execution time. Overall, this integration streamlined our DevOps pipeline, reduced release cycles, and increased our ability to deliver high-quality software on time with confidence.
Q6: At Walmart, you transitioned the team to cross-browser testing using Selenium Grid, reducing browser-related bugs by 35%. Could you elaborate on the process of implementing this transition and the lessons learned in managing cross-browser compatibility at scale?
Sneha Singireddy: At Walmart, transitioning to cross-browser testing using Selenium Grid was a strategic move to improve product quality across diverse user environments. Initially, we faced a high incidence of browser-specific bugs, particularly with layout inconsistencies and JavaScript behavior across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
To address this, I set up a scalable Selenium Grid infrastructure that allowed us to run automated tests in parallel across different browsers and operating systems. We prioritized high-traffic browser combinations based on analytics data and created a tiered testing strategy that balanced coverage and execution time.
One key lesson learned was the importance of maintaining browser-specific test data and handling rendering delays through dynamic waits, rather than fixed sleeps, to reduce flakiness. We also implemented visual validation tools to catch subtle UI discrepancies.
As a result, we reduced browser-related bugs by 35%, improved end-user satisfaction, and gained more confidence in our releases across all supported platforms.
Conclusion
Talking with Sneha Singireddy feels like a crash course in practical QA leadership. Her approach to automation is all about building reliable systems that can adapt and scale. She reminds us that behind every test suite is a thinking mind, asking smart questions and solving real-world problems. Sneha’s thoughts on cross-team collaboration, performance monitoring, and test data strategy show how QA can become a major strength of any development process.
She also displays her focus on keeping things clean, efficient, and purpose-driven. This interview is a peek into how excellence in software testing gets built, brick by brick, by someone who’s done the work, offering a fresh perspective and a reminder: quality isn’t just tested, it’s engineered.