Marius Ene — Senior Functional QA Consultant (B2B)

Now

What I’m doing in the current chapter.

In progress

Embedded functional QA for product teams, under NDA. I stay close to what users feel and what the business needs to decide: mobile and wearable journeys closed with clear release readiness and handover, and a web product kept honest — functional behaviour first, with AI only where technical checks would otherwise steal focus from the user.

What I do

Quality pointed at the user — and the business.

Functional judgement first. Technical depth second, and mostly accelerated by AI so it never becomes the whole story.

Product validation

Does this still serve the user and the business case? I validate journeys, acceptance, and release risk — not coverage theatre.

Stakeholder engagement & UAT

Cross-functional alignment with Product, Engineering, and business owners. UAT that produces a ship/wait decision, not a late checklist.

Functional quality & practice

Strategy, guidelines, defect hygiene, and Quality Maturity views so friction becomes visible — and fixable — without slowing delivery.

AI for the technical layer

Security, performance, and automation scaffolding via AI — so my hours stay on functional truth and stakeholders, not tooling rabbit holes.

Mission

AI for technical noise. Humans for the user.

In this age it is easy to confuse more automation with more value. I use AI so I can spend my best hours on user journeys, acceptance, and business risk — not on wiring the technical layer by hand.

Technical work, delegated with care

I use Cursor and ChatGPT to draft API checks, shape performance scenarios, and clear repetitive setup. That is scaffolding — not the mission.

Human judgement stays on the user

Pass/fail for what matters still comes from user journeys, acceptance criteria, and business risk. A fluent model answer is never an oracle for release.

Speed that serves the core

AI buys back time for exploratory thinking, stakeholder alignment, and asking whether we are still serving the user — the part more teams forget while polishing pipelines.

“Serve the user. Protect the business. Let AI draft the technical checks — never the meaning of done.”

Experience

Clients, capacity, and what I delivered.

Fourteen years keeping programmes honest about users and outcomes — as employee, freelance, seconded consultant, and B2B. Tools change. Serving the user does not.

Product validation

User journeys & acceptance over tooling theatre

Stakeholders

UAT, Product, Engineering — shared “done”

14+ years

Sodexo · UBS · Siemens · Aon · banking · gaming

B2B

Trend Waves SRL · AI for technical scaffolding

Sodexo

June 2022 — June 2026

Global facilities & delivery platforms

Functional QA Engineer & Test Practice Manager

Employed via Odeen / Oxford Corp → B2B from late 2022

Grew from embedded functional QA into test practice leadership on programmes serving clients worldwide — always asking whether quality work served users and delivery decisions, not just activity metrics.

Functional QA on global facility / delivery platforms — retail services through Delivery Service Platform streams
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365): functional, end-to-end and UAT coverage of account-linked front-end features across region-based instances, plus validation of an account data migration
Aligned with Head of Engineering, Tech Leads, and Product on requirements, incidents, and release reporting
Checked Figma intent against functional behaviour; compatibility and cross-browser verification
Grew into test lead work: interviewing QA, consolidating strategy, Quality Maturity Matrix for leadership
Azure DevOps dashboards and defect hygiene so quality was visible without status theatre
Covered Product Owner / Scrum Master gaps when delivery needed continuity

Playtika

April 2022 — June 2022

Mobile games

QA Engineer

Employed · studio QA

Short, high-intensity studio engagement supporting release quality and production incident response.

Functional testing and production incident pairing with developers
Shortened art-integration feedback by pairing with designers
Charles Proxy asset tracking and App Insights crash analysis in pre-production

Cegeka

2019 — 2022

Smart cities & multi-tenant platforms

Agile Tester

Freelance / contract QA

Long-running freelance mission for QPark (via Cegeka) — multi-tenant parking and smart-city services across customer-facing, back-office, mobile, and API journeys.

End-to-end functional QA: C2C parking sessions, back-office tools, native iOS/Android, APIs, Sitecore content
Integrations across a multi-application estate (including Dynamics Nav / Navision touchpoints)
Transversal team alignment, device prioritisation, and support for QA hiring interviews

IT Teams · Priority Software

2020 — 2021

ERP / enterprise UI

QA Engineer

Part-time contract (parallel to Cegeka)

Parallel engagement simplifying a complex ERP experience — test design, release discipline, and knowledge transfer for a small product team.

User stories, defects, and reporting in JIRA; design and execution in TestRail
Release management validations, production incident reproduction, and onboarding handovers
Functional and end-to-end testing on a modernised ERP UI layer

Netcentric

2016 — 2019

Digital experience · banking & industrial

QA Engineer

Employed · multi-client Adobe programmes

Adobe Experience programmes for global brands — UBS (Switzerland & Wealth Management Americas) and Siemens — where stakeholder UAT and process quality mattered as much as finding bugs.

AEM, Adobe Campaign, and DAM journeys from back-office setup to end-user experience
Stakeholder and UAT alignment; production incident pairing; compatibility across clients and devices
Process improvements that stuck: defect template (~40% fewer developer returns), automated JIRA reporting (~70% less report effort), E2E docs (~30% less team effort)

ALTEN Romania

2015 — 2016

Banking & BPM

Quality Assurance Consultant

Consultant seconded to banking clients

Client-facing consultancy across two banking programmes — mobile banking quality and business-process platforms.

ING Belgium Homebank (via ING Hub Romania): mobile compatibility, regression/exploratory, SAFe PI planning, shift-left pair testing with developers, and a clean handover to the Belgium team
Raiffeisen Bank Romania BPM (Appian): test cases in HP ALM, JIRA/Confluence hygiene, deployment reports, and Agile process improvements

Code Factory · OpenBet / Ladbrokes

2014 — 2015

Betting & gaming platforms

Test Analyst

Employed · games sub-stream lead (QA)

Owned QA for the Games sub-stream on a major betting platform — from junior analyst to the person accountable for release risk on that slice.

Sole QA then lead for Games (slots & related): smoke, regression, risk-based prioritisation, KPIs
Stood up Agile/Kanban for production incidents; Postman API collections; iOS/Android compatibility
Aligned with Sports Betting and Wallet streams for platform-wide releases and campaign readiness

Bandai Namco Games Romania

2012 — 2014

Mobile games

QA Tester

Employed · studio QA

Foundation years in exploratory, compliance, and regression testing for mobile games — where noticing what players feel still matters more than ticking a sheet.

Exploratory and checklist-driven execution; defect logging and retesting in JIRA
iOS/Android compatibility; gameplay and design-doc analysis; progress reporting to leads

Organizations helped

Clients, programmes, and delivery partners from those years — compact marks, full story above.

OneBeyond
Worldline
Sodexo
Odeen Software
Oxford Corp
Aon
Cognizant
MBG Cognizant
Playtika
Q-Park
Cegeka
Priority Software
IT Teams
UBS
Siemens
Netcentric
ING
Raiffeisen
ALTEN
OpenBet
Ladbrokes
CodeFactory
Bandai Namco
GAlliance

Writing

Notes from the quality seat.

Notes on keeping quality aimed at users and the business — and on using AI for technical work without letting it steal the mission.

P020 Oct 20266 min read

Product validation before test case sprawl

Test cases multiply when nobody is sure what serving the user means. I validate the product against user and business outcomes first, and document second.

P213 Oct 20267 min read

API smoke checks functional QA should own

You do not need to become an SDET to protect integrations. A small set of API smoke checks anchored to user journeys catches a class of surprises before UI testing starts.

P16 Oct 20267 min read

Embedding QA without hero culture

Teams that only ship when QA saves the day are already fragile. How I embed so that quality survives ordinary weeks, holidays and my leaving, even when I am the only tester.

P123 Sep 20266 min read

Regression strategy without paralysis

Full regression every sprint is a fantasy. Here is how I choose what to re-check so releases stay honest without freezing delivery.

All writing

20 notes so far, one new note most weeks

How we work

Straightforward B2B engagement.

B2B / contract via SC Trend Waves SRL
Remote across Europe from Romania
Functional first — user journeys and business risk before tooling
Evidence Product and leadership can read without a translator

Contact

Let’s talk about your next release.

If you need someone who will fight for the user journey and the business call — not just more technical coverage — let’s talk.

Connect with me