Balaji Gopalakrishnan
DUBLIN
Summary
Technical Lead with 17+ years of experience in Testing, Escalation, Quality assurance, Customer engagement, and Implementation in the Networking Domain. Extensive experience in Functional, Performance, Convergence, Regression, Scaling, Stress, and Customer profile testing. Experience in Deployment and Operation for Tier-1 ISP Proven skills and expertise in Routers, DSLAM, DPI, and NPUs I am a dedicated coach, mentor, and collaborator. Having a good mix of manual and automation testing experience Played a key role in reducing field defects by working with customers and implementing client scenarios into feature testing. My strengths include leading high-performing teams and driving quality initiatives for networking software and infrastructure
Overview
21
21
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Technical Lead
Cisco System | SPBU
06.2012 - Current
- As part of Service Provider BU, Working on 8000, ASR9000, NCS5500 Routers, and Silicon one NPU, Test, and validate products with merchant plus silicon and Cisco's silicon one. Product types include Fixed and Distributed Routers.
- Customer requirement testing for Routing protocol includes L3VPN, BGP-LU,MPLS, BGP, OSPF, ISIS, L2 &L3 Multicast, Mvpn, Fabric, Nv satellite
- Test, Automate, Release Planning, Software Bugs, Triaging, Cross-functional team
- Performance, Convergence, Scale Testing
- Silicon One Asic, Packet forwarding Pipeline, OFA, Leeba SDK testing
- Implemented process improvements that enhanced operational efficiency and reduced time-to-market for new products.
- Conducted regular code reviews, promoting best practices and maintaining high quality in automation development.
- Team building and mentoring
- Customer Escalation handling
- Customer Defects Handling
- High-Scale multicast solution for Charter Communications, Comast, Deutsche Telekom
- Mentored junior engineers, fostering skill development and knowledge sharing within the team.
System Test Engineer
HCL Technologies
01.2006 - 05.2012
- Worked with various customers and clients including Juniper, Tellabs, HP Procure, Avici System, and Agree NPU. Worked on DSLAM, BNG, L2, L3, and MPLS Protocols.
- Responsibilities:
- Conducted regression testing to validate fixes and confirm ongoing functionality, enhancing product reliability.
- Involved in System test, Protocol test
- AT&T migration test from Avici Core to Cisco Router
- Customer Deployment, Escalation, Training
- Test plan, execution, defect identification, and quality enhancement.
- Mentored junior engineers on best practices in system testing, fostering team development and knowledge sharing.
Education
Master of Computer Application -
Bharathidasan University
CHENNAI01-2001
Skills
- Routing Protocol: L3VPN, BGP-LU, BGP, OSPF, ISIS, Fabric, Multicast L2 ,L3,MVPN, MPLS LDP, EVPN, FRR, Vlan, STP, RSTP, MSTP
- AI & AI Ops: Codex, MCP, Jinjia2, Agent, Skills, SMX, Prompt Hub
- REST, NETCONF, TELEMETRY
- Python, Cafy framework
- Test Tool: IXIA, Spirent, Breakingpoint
- Platform: Cisco 8k,9k,5500, Juniper, HPE, Tellabs
- Observability : Grafana
Websites
Certification
CCNP,CCNA
Interests
Badminton, Chess
Timeline
Technical Lead
Cisco System | SPBU
06.2012 - Current
System Test Engineer
HCL Technologies
01.2006 - 05.2012
Master of Computer Application -
Bharathidasan University