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Jaakko Salminen

Quality Engineering

Senior Testing Specialist. Test leadership with hands-on automation.

Senior testing professional with ~20 years of experience in complex, business- and mission-critical embedded and SaaS systems. Strong in system & acceptance testing, test leadership, and automation with CI/CD.

  • ~20 years of experience
  • Embedded
  • SaaS
  • Mobile
  • Automation + Leadership
  • Continuous learning
  • Tampere, Finland

Impact

Clear results across teams and products

  • Owned end-to-end testing strategy and practices
  • Built automated system-level testing solutions from scratch
  • Implemented continuous testing via CI/CD pipelines
  • Led and mentored testing across varied team structures, environments, and cultures
  • Designed E2E, API, and performance testing approaches for cloud services

Experience

Timeline of roles and responsibilities

  1. Dec 2022 – Present

    Senior Test Automation Specialist

    Fennoa

    Ownership of mobile E2E and API test automation, plus continuous testing in CI/CD. Support for Browser automation efforts.

    • Mobile E2E automation design and implementation
    • API automation and continuous testing in pipelines
    • Manual and exploratory testing support
    • Close collaboration with testers, developers and product owners
    PythonRobot FrameworkAppiumAzure DevOpsGitHub ActionsCypressJavaScript
  2. May 2018 – Dec 2022

    Test Lead

    Cloubi (Otava Group)

    Owned testing, test automation, and QA processes; grew and mentored a test team.

    • Owned QA processes and testing strategy
    • Led E2E and API automation; added performance testing
    • Stakeholder collaboration to ensure delivery quality
    • Worked on testability and requirements clarity
    PythonRobot FrameworkPlaywrightCypressJenkinsGatlingTerraformAWS
  3. Jun 2016 – May 2018

    Test Engineer

    Soikea (Etteplan)

    Delivered testing and automation for multiple customer projects; integration-heavy systems.

    • System testing solutions from scratch
    • Test automation for complex environments
    • Distributed multi-stakeholder collaboration
    PythonJavaRobot FrameworkSeleniumAzureSOAP APIs
  4. Jul 2006 – Nov 2015

    Support/Test Engineer

    uNav / Atheros / Qualcomm

    Embedded positioning software testing in large-scale, critical products.

    • Test planning and execution; lab maintenance and enhancements
    • International distributed work (Europe/India/China)
    • Coordinated daily work of subcontractors
    Perl.NET C#

Education

Education & certificates

Education

  • BBA, Business Information Systems — Tampere University of Applied Sciences (2016)

Certificates

  • ISTQB Certified Tester Advanced Level Test Management (CTAL-TM v3.0), 2026
  • MoT Advanced Certificate in Test Automation (MoT-ACTA), 2024
  • Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I), 2022
  • New Relic Certified Performance Pro, 2019
  • ISTQB Certified Tester, 2016
View certification details ->

Courses

  • Locust & Python - Modern Performance Testing Framework
  • GitHub Copilot Beginner to Pro - AI for Coding & Development
  • OWASP Top 10 for Mobile Apps – 2025 Edition
  • AI Agents & Workflows - The Practical Guide
  • Test Reporting - Know-How & Templates for Test Managers
View all courses ->

Capabilities

Leadership, testing depth, and delivery acceleration

Leadership & strategy

  • Test leadership & team management
  • Test strategy & planning
  • QA practice and process development
  • Stakeholder collaboration

Testing focus

  • System & acceptance testing
  • Regression testing (manual + automated)
  • Exploratory testing
  • Performance testing

Automation & delivery

  • Test automation enablement
  • CI/CD continuous testing
  • API and E2E test design
Languages
Python, JavaScript, Java, C#
Frameworks
Robot Framework, Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Appium
CI/CD
Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
Cloud/infra
AWS, Azure, Terraform, Packer
Performance
Gatling, JMeter
Ways of work
Scrum, Kanban, Agile, Lean, SAFe

Selected work

Showroom highlights

Illustration of a virtual Kanban board

Virtual Kanban boards in Software Development

  • Problem: Physical Kanban boards can be limiting in mobile and distributed software teams that need location-independent collaboration.
  • Approach: This 52-page Bachelor's thesis (November 2016) evaluates three virtual Kanban solutions using Kanban rule coverage, usability, cost, and two case studies across different team contexts.
  • Outcome: Virtual boards are easy to use and add clear value over physical boards, but Kanban rule implementation varies widely and no single tool is best for every project.
  • Link: Open project
Pipeline from Robot Framework failures to AI triage JSON report

Robot Framework Result Analysis AI

  • Problem: Robot Framework failures often produce long logs that slow down triage and make root-cause analysis expensive.
  • Approach: Runs Robot tests, extracts failed cases, adds Playwright trace context when available, redacts common secrets, and sends structured context to OpenAI.
  • Outcome: Generates actionable JSON triage reports with failure type, confidence, likely root cause, retry guidance, and categorized fix suggestions for CI workflows.
  • Link: Open project
Phone UI, Appium tools, and VS Code flow showing prompt-driven Android automation

Appium Agent Tools for VS Code

  • Problem: Mobile test automation usually means context switching between scripts, inspectors, and manual device poking, which slows down feedback loops.
  • Approach: Built a TypeScript VS Code extension that exposes 7 GitHub Copilot-callable Appium tools (start/stop session, find, tap, type, screenshot, page source) over raw W3C WebDriver HTTP.
  • Outcome: Enables prompt-driven Android UI automation directly in VS Code, with saved screenshot/XML artifacts that make debugging and bug reports faster and repeatable.
  • Link: Open project

About

Working style

I’m at my best in environments where quality is treated as a product feature and feedback speed matters. I like clear plans, measurable outcomes, and collaboration that makes testing an enabler - not a gate.

  • Step-by-step approach
  • Pragmatic execution
  • Fast feedback focus

Contact

Let’s connect

Email

jaakko.salminen@jasal.fi

Phone

+358 40 869 7390

Location

Tampere, Finland

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/jaakkosalminen-qa