Head of Quality Engineering, Thomann MusicGermany
Quality is an engineering system, not a testing phase.
I joined Thomann Music in 2022 as its first quality engineer and built the function from there: six product teams shipping with an embedded quality engineer, a company-wide testing standard, and the AI coding guidelines the organisation adopted. I still read the failing test myself.
- 1st
- quality engineer hired at Thomann Music, September 2022
- 6
- product teams shipping with an embedded quality engineer
- 15
- years in quality engineering, Bangalore to Germany
- 4
- companies IBM, 1&1 Mail & Media, LogMeIn, Thomann
Selected work
What I have changed
- Read: Built quality engineering at Thomann Music from the first hire
Case study
Built quality engineering at Thomann Music from the first hire
A music retailer online since 1996 hired its first quality engineer in September 2022. What I introduced, in what order, and why the measure was never the test count.
- Scale
- Six product teams, each shipping with an embedded quality engineer.
- Role
- First quality engineer, September 2022. Head of Quality Engineering since 2026.
- Read: Wrote the testing standard and moved release decisions into the teams that ship
Case study
Wrote the testing standard and moved release decisions into the teams that ship
Turning a quality function that ran tests into one that made ownership, gates and release decisions explicit across product teams.
- Scale
- One testing standard for the whole organisation, six product teams releasing against it.
- Role
- Author, from concept through governance approval to organisation-wide rollout.
- Read: Wrote the AI-assisted engineering guidelines the organisation adopted
Case study
Wrote the AI-assisted engineering guidelines the organisation adopted
Writing AI-assisted development guidelines for an engineering organisation, and the review process that decided whether anyone would follow them.
- Scale
- Adopted across the engineering organisation in August 2026.
- Role
- Author. Reviewed by four engineering managers and senior engineers, then signed off by leadership.
- Read: Browser automation a team can trust on the first read
Case study
Browser automation a team can trust on the first read
How I approach Playwright architecture, locator strategy and CI feedback so that a red build means something and a green one can be trusted.
- Scale
- End-to-end suites run on every change and nightly, in pipelines shared by several teams.
- Evidence
- playwright-ci-reporter, published on npm under MIT. Playwright, and before it CodeceptJS and Selenium.
Career
Fifteen years, four companies, two countries
- 2026 – present
- Head of Quality EngineeringThomann Music
- 2024 – 2026
- Engineering Manager, Quality EngineeringThomann Music
- 2022 – 2023
- Test Quality ArchitectThomann Music
- 2022
- Senior Software Quality EngineerIBM
- 2020 – 2022
- Software Quality EngineerLogMeIn
- 2019 – 2020
- Quality Automation Engineer1&1 Mail & Media
- 2018 – 2020
- Master’s, International Business IT ConsultingHochschule OffenburgEducation
- 2010 – 2017
- Application Quality EngineerIBM
Recognition and public work
Best International Student of 2019
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Utility functions for JavaScript and TypeScript projects, on npm under MIT. 36 releases since August 2024, the latest v1.14.2 in August 2026.
A CI-friendly Playwright reporter on npm under MIT, built on the utilities above. v1.5.3, last published March 2025.
Local dictation with a grammar pass for Apple Silicon Macs, MIT. Nothing leaves the machine. Six releases since August 2026.
Automation that keeps human judgment
A working principle for AI-assisted engineering: let tooling investigate, draft and challenge, and keep publication, approval and merge with a person who can be asked why.
How I work
Create capability, not dependency.
Start with trust.
Give engineers room to exercise judgment, then make ownership and expectations explicit enough that nobody has to guess where a decision sits.
Make quality visible.
Risk, evidence and release confidence belong in the open, as shared decisions. When they live only in a quality engineer’s head, the organisation cannot act on them.
Automate repetition, retain judgment.
Tooling should remove mechanical work and sharpen the evidence a human reads. It should never blur who approved what.