Greg Sypolt professional headshot

Greg Sypolt

Senior Director of Developer Experience

FINRA

Transforming software quality through 25+ years of automation-first leadership, developer experience innovation, and engineering excellence.

About Me

With over 25 years in the technology industry, specialize in the convergence of Quality Engineering, DevOps Practices, and Developer Experience to drive tangible business outcomes. I am a technical leader who architects and scales high performance engineering organizations.

As Senior Director of Developer Experience at FINRA, I lead multi-million dollar transformation programs, including modernizations of GitLab and Atlassian Cloud. Lead optimized critical infrastructure like JFrog Artifactory and integrated emerging AI tools such as Amazon Q, streamlining processes for over 4,000 users and developers.

My career spans leadership roles at EVERFI and Gannett, where I've championed testing strategies, DevOps practices, and engineering cultures that prioritize quality as a core value. I'm also an active conference speaker and industry blogger, sharing insights on autonomous testing, model-based approaches, and developer productivity.

25+
Years of Experience
100+
Technologies & Tools
Quality and DevOps Impact

Core Competencies

Testing & Quality Integration

  • Testing The Right Things
  • Infrastructure, Unit, API, Integration, Contract, UI Flows
  • Visual Testing
  • GenAI with Amazon Q
  • Autonomous Testing

Leadership & Strategy

  • Industry Blogger
  • Best Practices & Thought Leadership
  • Mentoring and Training
  • Strategist & Evangelist
  • Conference Speaker

Engineering Practices

  • Culture of Quality
  • Agile Development
  • Reliable Test Automation
  • Continuous Integration
  • Build to the Test
  • Developer Experience

Leadership Skills

  • Influencer
  • Self Awareness
  • Effective Communication
  • Learning Agility
  • Coaching and Mentoring
  • Leading Leaders and Individual Contributors

Technical Skills

Testing & Quality Integration

Selenium Cypress Playwright Jest NightwatchJS Appium Testim Web Page Test Puppeteer Espresso XCUI Earl Grey Custom Selenium Grid Model-Based Testing (Simulato, Testmodeller.io) SonarQube ArtilleryIO

Programming & Automation

JavaScript ReactJS Angular Typescript Golang Python Ruby Ruby on Rails NodeJS BackboneJS Workflow Automation Developer Tool Integration

Agile Methodologies

Agile SAFe Scrum Kanban

AI & Developer Assistance

Amazon Q Moveworks GitLab Duo Atlassian Intelligence Claude Gemini chatGPT AI-powered Code Review Developer Chatbots

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS GCP AWS Device Farm Wonder Proxy Sauce Labs Applitools AWS Device Farm

DevOps & Containers

Terraform Helmchart Kubernetes Docker Quay Artifactory HashiCorp Vault

Developer Experience & Productivity Tools

CircleCI Jenkins GitLab GitHub Actions Pipeline as Code LaunchDarkly Blue/Green & Canary Deployments Backstage

Monitoring & Observability

New Relic Sumo Logic DataDog Sentry Status Page Splunk Developer Metrics Productivity Analytics DORA Metrics

Speaking Engagements

Applitools Customer Spotlight

Greg Sypolt - EVERFI
April 2023

The most important piece of it is it actually provides this inventory of your system, the source of truth of what it will look like out in the wild

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Thoughts on Test Automation Frameworks

Applitool: Future of Testing
October 2021

Expert panel participant with Joe Colantonio (moderator), Bijoya Chatterjee, Marie Drake, Jeff Wilkinson

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Front-End Test Fest

Applitools
June 2021

Educational courses and quality digital transformation with model-based testing at EVERFI

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Building a Culture of Quality Excellence

Applitools Webinar
July 2020

Every team member must be accountable for the quality of the application, and understand their role in delivering it.

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Quality, Coverage, and Teamwork: The Holy Trinity of USA TODAY's Winning Dev/Test Team

Applitools Webinar
May 2019

Gives us a detailed tour of how he built his Dev/Test team for success – including: hiring test engineers, organizational culture, must-have tools, work processes, and best practices.

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Live Podcat with Digital Anarchist

SauceCon 2019
April 2019

Greg Sypolt and Aaron Wolford from Gannett (USA Today) at SauceCon 2019 discusses the importance of embracing quality and automation to make apps better on their teams.

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Wizard of Oz Testing, Panel Speaks

SauceCon 2019
April 2019

A moderator for a testing panel focused on the journey to CI/CD with Docker and Kubernetes, covering topics from continuous testing best practices and organizational transformation to new open source testing tools, scriptless and visual QA, and how to leverage analytics and prioritize automation.

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Inserting Quality Into Every Step of Deployment

Sauce Labs Webinar
August 2018

The shift-left and shift-right movements are changing delivery chains, leading to tighter release cycles and a greater focus on production, with Continuous Testing emerging to integrate test considerations into production for improved responsiveness and application quality.

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Achieving CI Excellence Through Test Automation

Sauce Con 2018
May 2018

At Gannett | USA Today Network, the evolving Test Automation role is already blurring with DevOps by owning the Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline, defining its best practices, and acting as the quality gatekeeper for product releases.

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CI Excellence with Test Automation Engineers

Selenium 2017
April 2017

At Gannett | USA Today Network, the evolving Test Automation role is already merging with DevOps by owning the Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline and serving as the quality gatekeeper, a transformation that Greg will detail by dividing CI excellence into tiers covering practices, implementation, and the new Test Automation experience.

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This Is My Architecture: AWS Device Farm and Applitools

AWS re:Invent 2017
December 2017

n this episode of This Is My Architecture, Greg from Gannett | USA TODAY Network details how they manage the challenge of testing and deploying updates multiple times a day to over 100 mobile applications across various devices by using AWS Device Farm, Jenkins on EC2, Artifactory, and Applitools.

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171: CI Awesomeness with Test Automation

Test Guild Podcast
September 2017

In this episode of Test Talk, Greg Sypolt will discuss how to transform automated tests to speed up development and reduce maintenance, sharing how his team uses test automation to achieve Continuous Integration (CI) and DevOps excellence.

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Using Design Patterns to Improve Automated Testing

Sauce Con 2017
June 2017

Design patterns in software engineering are general, reusable solutions to common problems, and while not strictly required for Selenium development, a seasoned automation engineer understands their necessity for speeding up development and reducing maintenance impact, which is why elite companies dedicate an experienced architect to oversee this process.

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Test and Debug Your Mobile Apps on Real Android/iOS Devices in the Cloud with AWS Device Farm

AWS re:Invent 2016
December 2016

Gannett transitioned from time-consuming manual processes to fast, repeatable automation using Chef, Scalr, AWS, and Jenkins, enabling them to efficiently scale their continuous integration pipeline and build/test over 100 Android native apps on Amazon EC2 and Device Farm.

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Thought Leadership

What’s the Next Big Thing in Software Testing? Test Generation!

July 23, 2019

Here’s one idea that I think will play an increasingly important role in the future of software testing: test generation.

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Building an Agile Process Playbook for Software Testing

April 18, 2019

What exactly is agile testing, and why would we need an agile process playbook for software testing? Let me explain!

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Tips for Achieving Continuous Improvement in Software Testing

February 19, 2019

To continuously enhance your software testing process, focus on these five organizational and technical strategies for faster, more efficient, and productive results.

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Building a Quality Platform From The Ground Up

February 4, 2020

To move towards elite quality status in an agile environment, building a Quality Platform from the ground up is essential for increasing your quality maturity, driving value, and fostering shared accountability.

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The role quality plays in your service level agreement

August 15, 2019

A focused Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for software testing is crucial for managing expectations, defining quality, reducing risk, and ensuring success across the entire software development lifecycle.

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What is Your Communication Template for Testing Results?

March 19, 2019

A strong communication template is the key to effectively sharing software testing results with all stakeholders—including developers, QA, and non-technical staff—to drive continuous improvement in a DevOps environment.

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Using AI/ML and Production Data to Improve Software Testing

February 14, 2019

This post explores how to leverage AI/ML together with production data to conduct smarter regression testing and enhance overall software system quality.

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Avoiding Test Script Maintenance Nightmares

November 1, 2018

This article provides practical strategies and tips for making the often-tedious process of test script maintenance faster, easier, and less of a nightmare.

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Speed Up Your Tests with Espresso Parallel Testing

September 6, 2018

o achieve faster feedback and better speed goals in native mobile app testing, utilize Espresso parallel testing on emulators with every pull request, which helps resolve key dilemmas like lack of parallelism and test inefficiency.

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Using Canary Release Pipelines to Achieve Continuous Testing

June 20, 2018

A canary release pipeline is a strategy that enables testing in production by gradually rolling out new software versions to a small subset of users, thus helping to achieve continuous testing. Gemini can make mistakes, so double-check it.

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Extended Debugging with Sauce Labs

April 12, 2018

The Extended Debugging feature in Sauce Labs provides QA engineers with deeper insights, including network request data and browser console logs, to quickly troubleshoot automated test failures and identify application issues before release.

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Choosing a CI/CD Tools

March 17, 2018

When selecting a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tool, the decision should be guided by five key factors to ensure the tool meets your project's specific needs and budget despite the large number of similar options available.

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Nightwatch.js Makes Software Test Scripts Fun and Easy

February 15, 2018

Nightwatch.js is a clean, straightforward Selenium wrapper that simplifies and accelerates the development of front-end test scripts using JavaScript and Node.js by offering numerous out-of-the-box commands, assertions, and custom helper capabilities.

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The Challenges and Benefits of Model-Based Testing

January 17, 2018

Model-Based Testing (MBT) is an evolving test automation approach that involves generating test cases from a system model, offering significant advantages but also presenting certain challenges which are detailed alongside inspiration for adopting this methodology.

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Devising a Testing Strategy for Containers

September 27, 2017

To successfully leverage containers for faster app deployment and integration, organizations must develop an effective testing strategy by borrowing ideas from Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and utilizing automated testing grids like Sauce Labs to test containerized applications without maintaining their own infrastructure.

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Why You Should Be Testing in Production

September 6, 2017

While traditional Quality Assurance relies on staging environments, testing in production provides a more authentic assessment of software function by using real-world user data and environments, which can reveal issues that staging cannot accurately replicate.

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How Automated Testing Helped Gannett Focus on a Quality Product...

August 29, 2017

By implementing a comprehensive automated testing strategy, Gannett was able to shift responsibility for quality to development teams, drastically reduce errors and release delays caused by manual testing, and accelerate application releases from weeks to days or hours.

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The AI Test Bots Are Coming

August 22, 2017

AI test automation is an emerging and increasingly significant approach in automated testing that utilizes intelligent bots to enhance testing capabilities, and this article explores its importance, application, and the challenges that must be overcome for its full realization.

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Achieving CI Excellence through Test Automation

June 14, 2017

Achieving Continuous Integration (CI) excellence requires a deep integration of test automation with DevOps practices, which is transforming the traditional Test Automation role and can be understood by examining its three core tiers: practices, implementation, and the new automation experience.

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Discovering Security Vulnerabilities with Selenium

April 4, 2017

Since security is often neglected in the development lifecycle, testing tools like Selenium can be effectively used as a defense mechanism to discover and eliminate common web application security vulnerabilities, such as those defined by OWASP.

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New Relic Synthetics Monitoring Using Selenium

February 28, 2017

New Relic Synthetics Monitoring utilizes Selenium to simulate user behavior on websites from various global locations, collecting data on performance metrics like load times and failures to proactively detect and prevent issues before they impact customers.

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Polymer Web Component Unit Testing

February 14, 2017

Because traditional testing tools like Selenium are not fully compatible with Google's Polymer Project for creating custom, standards-aligned HTML web components, a specific testing strategy is essential to ensure quality for Polymer web development projects.

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Using Test-Kitchen for Local Testing

January 23, 2017

Test Kitchen is a self-service, local testing framework that uses virtual technologies to perform integration testing for Chef Cookbooks and effectively isolate and debug application or infrastructure code across multiple operating systems.

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Visual Testing With Applitools and Sauce Labs

January 9, 2017

Applitools Eyes is a groundbreaking tool that enables automated visual validation of user interface (UI) components by integrating visual checkpoints into automated testing frameworks like Selenium and Appium, allowing software testers to restore the visual testing capabilities lost during the shift from manual testing.

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Functional Testing And The IoT

December 9, 2016

As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands and connects everyday gadgets, ensuring their quality and security will require a challenging blend of existing and innovative functional testing strategies.

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Unit Testing Chef Cookbooks with ChefSpec

November 23, 2016

ChefSpec is an easy-to-read, fast-feedback unit testing framework for Chef cookbooks that allows developers to validate infrastructure code changes without relying on a virtual or cloud machine.

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The basics of establishing a RESTful API testing program

July 17, 2016

To build a modern delivery pipeline and achieve quality upfront, teams must shift their testing focus from heavy UI tests to the testing pyramid methodology by establishing a RESTful API testing program that forms the necessary lower-level foundation of their testing portfolio.

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Get Started with Protractor Testing for AngularJS

April 6, 2016

Protractor is the dedicated end-to-end testing framework for AngularJS applications, and this guide provides new software developers in test with the fundamentals needed to establish a firm foundation in Protractor testing.

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Write Great Cucumber Tests

March 14, 201

Cucumber is a JavaScript methodology that facilitates Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) by encouraging collaboration across a software project and establishing a foundation of coding standards and design patterns for test automation.

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Contributing to Open-Source Projects

March 11, 2016

Contributing to an existing open-source project, such as Selenium, is vital for its longevity and success, offering individuals a chance to give back to the community, gain experience, and participate in a meaningful project through various roles that do not always require coding.

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Selenium Design Patterns

February 11, 2016

Understanding design patterns is highly recommended for test automation, particularly with Selenium, as they provide reusable solutions to common software design problems that can significantly accelerate development and reduce maintenance overhead.

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Planning Quality Architecture for 2020

January 11, 2016

Inspired by the concept of elite companies prioritizing infrastructure, planning a quality architecture for the future of software development involves a 'quality-first' approach centered on automation, scalability, recoverability, and analytics.

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What Does Quality Strategy Mean?

October 27, 2015

A quality strategy is a defined set of approved quality activities, including automation, manual testing, and reviews, that are executed in every sprint and release cycle, starting with investment in great user stories, to consistently deliver high-quality software and reduce release risk.

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Top 10 Resources for Test Automation Newbies

October 15, 2015

This post compiles Top 10 Resources to help new test automation engineers stay focused, select a primary technology to master, and avoid getting sidetracked on their learning journey.

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Automated Testing in a DevOps World

September 17, 2015

In a DevOps World, automated testing is a core objective that simplifies the testing effort by using scripts to execute repeatable tests, provide fast feedback, eliminate human error, and this post outlines five steps for a proper automation implementation.

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What is your definition of "Done"?

September 17, 2015

The Definition of Done (DoD) is a clear and concise, team-approved list of requirements that a software increment must satisfy to be considered a completed user story, sprint, or a release-ready component, ensuring everyone understands what 'done' means for the project.

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Getting the Existing Team On Board with Automation

September 3, 2015

To meet business demands for speed and quality, organizations must introduce automated testing to their existing manual testing teams, which requires treating the initial presentation as a critical 'job interview' to properly educate, set expectations, and address emotional reactions about job security.

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An Efficient Release Made is a Penny Earned

July 9, 2015

Implementing Continuous Integration (CI) and automated testing is a cost-effective change for software development organizations that helps deliver software faster with built-in quality, but requires a prior analysis of investment cost, timeline, and ROI (return on investment) to justify its adoption.

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Immutable Infrastructure

June 23, 2015

Immutable infrastructure is a modern cloud-based approach where servers are treated as commodities, and instead of making changes to existing virtual servers or containers, a new image is built and deployed while the old instance is completely terminated.

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Test Automation KPI's

June 4, 2015

After adopting automation to gain speed and consistency, a team must focus on establishing the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and a Continuous Integration (CI) process to measure progress, improve strategy, and achieve objectives like rapidly deploying code changes.

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Let's Connect

Interested in discussing quality engineering, developer experience, or speaking opportunities? I'd love to hear from you.