Hi, I'm
Karthik Vakkalagadda
|Test Infrastructure
I build engineering systems that make software safer, faster, and easier to ship. 7+ years building test automation frameworks and CI/CD infrastructure for multi-brand digital ordering, POS, and payments platforms across Web, Mobile, and API.
About Me
I'm an SDET / Automation Technical Lead based in Atlanta, Georgia, currently at Capgemini (Client: Inspire Brands). I own automation standards and framework direction, and lead CI/CD test execution across four Inspire Brands properties — Sonic, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin', and Arby's — as technical lead for a 4–6 person US-onsite/India-offshore team.
I authored most of the Java automation framework for Arby's and Buffalo Wild Wings as a first-year engineer, and became sole owner of Web and API automation within 18 months.
The part I actually enjoy is the diagnosis. The interesting failures are rarely in the test — they're in the system around it: the “flaky” suite that turns out to be a race condition in the app, the pipeline that fails only on the first run of the day, the coverage number that looks healthy while measuring the wrong thing. I'd rather fix a root cause than quarantine a symptom.
Recent work is increasingly AI-centered: I build MCP servers, agent skills, and prompt-driven test generation with human review gates before any generated suite is trusted — both inside the client engagement and in my personal platform.
I hold a B.Tech in Electronics & Communication Engineering from IIITDM Jabalpur (2019), and am AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner.