Seth J Bacon

Team Building & Career Growth

My leadership philosophy is rooted in coaching, clarity, and trust. I’ve built high-performing QA teams from scratch, inherited fractured departments and rebuilt morale, and helped junior testers grow into senior engineers and team leads. I’ve led teams as large as 50, balancing mentorship, delivery expectations, and team morale across shifting priorities. At one company, I was promoted to lead after a major layoff and had to win trust fast, coaching peers who had more tenure and creating structure in a fast-moving, under-resourced environment. At another company, I trained a manual-first team on automation fundamentals and cross-functional collaboration. I believe in meeting people where they are, investing in their growth, and creating a culture where asking “what could go wrong?” is encouraged, not avoided.

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Shift-Left Strategy

I’ve led shift-left initiatives at both the team and organizational level, moving QA from reactive fire fighting to proactive strategy. That includes embedding QA in story refinement, teaching devs how to write better tests, and aligning product and engineering on quality from day one.

I directed a company wide shift-left transition that included building training materials, integrating testing earlier in CI/CD, and facilitating collaboration between QA and product. I also brought risk based testing to sprint planning so we could focus where it mattered most. When done right, shift left is about building shared responsibility to facilitate smoother releases and a better product. It’s collaborative, not combative.

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Automation Architecture

I’ve architected automation frameworks across multiple environments, most very highly regulated. My approach balances speed with sustainability: selecting the right tools, designing modular, reusable components, and ensuring test coverage aligns with real world risk.

At one company, I led a shift to automation-first testing, building a custom Playwright framework in JavaScript and later extending it to TypeScript. I’ve coached devs and testers alike on integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, and my frameworks are still in use years after I implemented them.

Automation is about building systems that give teams fast, reliable feedback so they can deliver confidently.

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AI & LLM Testing

We can not sit and wait for technology to over take us. That’s why I’ve been studying AI for a few years now, and was even an early recipient of ISTQB’s first AI testing certification.

I’ve applied QA principles to machine learning systems, particularly in the context of LLM output evaluation and AI assisted workflows.

I built an AI powered test case generator here on this website for anyone to sample and see how AI can help us streamline QA processes. You can try it yourself under ‘AI Test Case Generator’ in the upper right.

My focus has been on identifying hallucinations, improving model accuracy, and testing AI tools as both technical systems and user facing products. In my current role, I’ve worked hands on with AI image detection and LLM integrations, guiding the AI architect in bringing the model’s accuracy from 39% to over 90% through targeted training data, testing edge case scenarios, and building feedback loops between QA and data science. AI changes fast, but quality is crucial. I bring structure to the chaos by asking: What does “working” mean for this model? Where might it fail? And how do we catch that early?

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Cross-functional Collaboration

Quality doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it takes alignment across engineering, product, UX, and ops. I’ve built that alignment from the ground up, embedding QA into planning sessions, refining user stories with PMs, and shaping workflows that reduce friction and increase trust. I don’t just collaborate across roles, I’ve stepped into them when needed. I’ve filled in as a developer, UX designer, release manager, and even Scrum Master to keep momentum moving and the bar high. That range gives me perspective and helps me bridge the gaps that cause failure when no one’s watching. The strongest QA leaders I’ve worked with weren’t gatekeepers, but connectors. That’s the model I follow.

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Quality Strategy & Risk Based Testing

Testing everything is impossible. Testing the right things is essential. I help teams identify what matters most, from critical user flows to high-risk edge cases, and align QA efforts with product impact, business risk, and real-world usage. I’ve implemented risk-based testing models that drive smarter coverage decisions, reduce test bloat, and accelerate confident releases. I’ve facilitated risk workshops with product and engineering, mapped test depth to risk tiers, and helped orgs move from “did we test enough?” to “did we test smart?” Good QA isn’t about chasing bugs, it’s about preventing the ones that could hurt the user, the product, or the brand. That starts with strategy.

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