Who

Artem Usov. 15+ years turning QA from a stage at the end of the pipeline into a property of the system.

I started as a junior tester in 2010 and spent the years since on the parts of the job most people skip: the architecture decisions made before anyone writes a test, the release mechanics that decide whether a Friday deploy is routine or heroic, and the organisational design that determines whether quality survives the person who introduced it.

Today I wear multiple hats — none of them ceremonial. At Informa, since 2017, I am Agile Delivery & QA Manager — quality, delivery predictability and operations across distributed teams on a multi-service platform. At K&C (Krusche & Company) I am Head of Quality Assurance: company-wide QA strategy, hiring, grading frameworks, and the escalation point across client engagements. 15 QA engineers report to me across 5 projects. Over 3 years I have run 4 projects containing 6 QA teams, one of them with 4 QA teams in parallel development streams.

The short version: I find the inefficiency, fix the cause rather than the symptom, and leave behind a system that keeps working after I have gone. If it needs me in the room to function, I did it wrong.

What I am accountable for right now

  • People. Hiring, one-to-ones, objectives, performance reviews, career development, promotion cases, difficult feedback, underperformance, and exits. I also define ideal-candidate profiles, role success paths and job descriptions, and design the interview and assessment exercises for engineering and lead roles.
  • Test architecture. How a system gets tested, decided before there is anything meaningful to test — testability requirements, environment topology, data strategy, and the contract between engineering and quality.
  • Delivery. Release engineering, CI/CD quality gates, blue/green deployment, rollback protocols, and the enterprise Jira and Tempo operating model that 150+ projects and 2,000+ users run on.
  • AI in the pipeline. Agentic and AI-assisted QA workflows that keep a human at the decision point — built, tuned against real tickets, and measured.

Credentials

Certifications. ISTQB Certified Tester, Foundation Level (SJSI / Polish Testing Board). Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt. Then the recent AI cluster, because this part of the field moves faster than certification bodies do: Generative AI Leader and Prompt Design in Vertex AI (Google), Claude 101, Claude Code in Action and AI Fluency Framework & Foundations (Anthropic), and Atlassian Rovo Fundamentals.

Education. Specialist’s Diploma in Engineering of Radio and Television Systems, and a Bachelor of Radio Engineering, both from Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics. The Specialist’s Diploma is a Master’s-equivalent qualification.

Published. “CMS Testing Challenges from Monolith to SaaS” and “Zero-Downtime Revolution: Informa’s Digital Transformation Journey”, both in the K&C case-study series — links on /proof/. Earlier: “Online & MMO games as instrument in political campaigns”. Recognised with Top Team 2022 at the Informa Awards.

What the people who worked with me say

LinkedIn recommendations, unedited except for length. Every name links to the person who wrote it, so you can check.

  • More recently, I have worked with Artem as an Agile Service Delivery Manager, where he excels at removing operational blockers and ensuring continuous value delivery. Artem consistently provided support across multiple levels, from technical troubleshooting to strategic planning, always ensuring our work met the highest standards.

    Farhad BabooSoftware Engineering Manager, Informa

  • He will listen and listen, then drop a solution that completely meets the requirement. Furthermore, he takes total ownership of these solutions. I have worked in places where progress is bogged down around slideware of what we should do; Artem is living testimony to demonstrating what we are doing!

    Mark A R SmithHead of Technology Delivery Office, Informa

  • He is a truly senior, reliable specialist who built our entire end-to-end testing process from scratch, including a rock-solid automation framework. Beyond his technical expertise, Artem stepped up as a strong delivery manager, ensuring everything ran smoothly and on schedule.

    Sardorbek GofurovSenior Software Engineer, Informa

  • He has a vast knowledge of our various platforms and applications as well as an eagerness to respond and engage with our Development and DevOps teams in order to address issues or develop new solutions to move our technology forward. He has also demonstrated excellent skill with how we can better leverage AI to make us more efficient as a team.

    Chris TrudeauHead of Engineering Operations, Informa

  • Day to day, there is always a ton of complexity and competing priorities. Artem is able to cut through the noise and identify the crux of the issues at hand, resolving them whilst guiding others around him to improve their understanding of the problem too.

    Josh GerbinoProduct Manager, Platform & CMS, Informa

  • Every interview Artem has conducted was exceptionally well-structured, respectful, and comfortable for candidates, regardless of their level of seniority. He has a rare ability to combine deep technical expertise with a calm and friendly communication style. Candidates consistently shared exclusively positive feedback after interviews with him, often highlighting how professional, transparent, and pleasant the experience was. Artem is a leader who builds trust from the very first interaction.

    Inna KasperovichSenior Talent Acquisition Specialist, K&C

  • Artem brings a strong sense of ownership to everything he does and consistently focuses on delivering real value for both the team and the business. He combines a deep understanding of quality processes with a practical, results-driven approach, which helps teams stay aligned and productive.

    Yevhen KarychkovskyiSenior Software Engineer, Google

  • He was a crucial member of the team, with his proactive and “product-minded” approach to team leadership and delivery a major contributor to the account becoming one of the company’s most important strategic partnerships.

    John Alexander AdamExecutive Member, Pavilion — then Head of Marketing, K&C

All recommendations are public on linkedin.com/in/artemus.