Josh McVey 20 years across operations, consulting, QA, automation, platform, and Build & Release. Contact name: Josh McVey location: Lawrence, Kansas, United States email: yersh13@gmail.com linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshmcvey github: https://github.com/y3rsh website: https://joshmcvey.com Headline Lead SDET, Build & Release manager, and process operator. Twenty years across QA strategy, test automation architecture, SDET, platform engineering, and software delivery. Summary - Lead SDET at Opentrons. Not the deepest expert in any single stack — the person who reads the situation, finds creative paths when resources are lean, and improves how the work gets done between idea and production. - Improves CI/CD, release cadence, test strategy, and cross-team coordination by leveraging relationships and understanding the motivations and incentives underneath them. - Manages Build & Release for two robot OSes and the full Opentrons application suite while still cutting versions, tags, and deployments alongside the team. - Owns Protocol Library, Opentrons Accounts, and authentication/authorization across web products; full-stack contributor on Opentrons AI. - Early adopter of AI tools — daily user, writes Cursor skills, project rules, and workflows that make AI operational for the team. Target roles - Lead SDET and platform engineering - Build & Release management and Developer Experience - Consulting and trusted-advisor engagements for process repair Good fit - Process improvement across release pipelines, test strategy, and cross-team handoffs - Brittle or missing test infrastructure - Making AI-assisted development operational for a team - Hard problems where relationships, motivations, and incentives are part of the solution - One person who does architectural thinking and implementation Not a fit - Raw scaling problems on massive distributed systems as the primary mandate Strengths (human site) Lead SDET, CI/CD automation, and platform Full-stack on Protocol Library, Opentrons Accounts, and OAuth/OIDC, and owner of the build and release pipelines that ship the robot software suite. I lead test automation across the full robot stack — on-robot systems, desktop apps, and the HTTP API — and mentor engineers in testing. Quality is built in, automated as much as possible, and starts before the code is written. Quality is not a phase. Connecting to the big picture — business objectives, product priorities, and the timelines that drive market fit — is what lets me help teams decide which process improvements and tech debt work actually matter, then drive that work deep into the SDLC. I improve processes by leveraging relationships and understanding the motivations and incentives underneath them. Comfortable in the architecture room and in standup the same week. Build & Release and Developer Experience I manage Opentrons Build & Release as a leader and hands on. Release cadence and the small details that keep robot software and cloud apps shipping new features on schedule. Skills leadership Build & Release management, Team standups, Cross-team release coordination delivery CI/CD, GitHub Actions, AWS, Release tagging and deployment engineering Python, TypeScript, Java, pytest, OAuth/OIDC, GraphQL, Docker, Kubernetes/OpenShift, Helm quality SDET, Test automation architecture, API testing, BDD/TDD, UAT automation observability Datadog ai Cursor skills and rules, AI-assisted feature delivery, OpenAI/Amplify integrations Experience Opentrons Labworks Inc. | Lead Software Engineer and Build & Release Manager | 2024-02 to present location: Remote / Queens, NY (company HQ) - Lead Build & Release for two robot OSes and the full Opentrons application suite. - Still hands-on on versions, tags, and deployments with the team. - Improve delivery efficiency, test automation, and cross-team release coordination. - Full-stack on Opentrons AI and Protocol Library. - Own authentication and authorization across all web products. Opentrons Labworks Inc. | Senior Developer and SDET | 2021-06 to present location: Remote / Queens, NY (company HQ) - Architect and operate Protocol Library (https://library.opentrons.com) and Opentrons Accounts. - CI/CD with GitHub Actions and AWS. - Monitoring and incident detection with Datadog. - Release and test frameworks that shortened robot software release cycles. TEKsystems | Test Automation Architect (Practice Architect, Continuous Testing) | 2019-08 to 2021-06 location: Remote - Led pytest automation for a gaming engine team of 10. - Led browser UAT in Azure DevOps for energy-sector .com testing with a team of 5. Rackspace | Software Developer, Test III | 2016-11 to 2019-08 location: Remote - Lead SDET on dedicated-device web portal. - Customer-facing web apps, ETL, and APIs. - Python, Java, TypeScript, Jenkins, OpenShift, Docker, GraphQL, Elasticsearch. Xpanxion | Test Architect / Lead Automation Engineer | 2009-12 to 2016-11 location: Remote - Long-term QA strategy and automation consulting. - Frameworks for web, API, ETL, mobile, and desktop. - BDD/TDD with Cucumber, JUnit, TestNG; performance with JMeter and LoadRunner. Epiq Systems, Standard Beverage, Target, self-employed | Earlier software, QA, and IT roles | 2003-05 to 2012-11 location: Kansas / Nebraska / remote - C# and Selenium automation, QA leadership for enterprise web and ETL. - Retail operations leadership at Target. - Nonprofit web, AV, and database work as independent contractor. Education - Kansas State University: BS, Physical Sciences (1996 to 2003) Certifications - CTFL (ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level) How I work with AI - I have been invigorated by learning and using AI tools. Staying on top of the rapid changes is challenging but I do so by reading and listening to podcasts. Faster iterations require more good taste! I iterate fast on real work and stay energized doing it. - In practice that means Cursor, Claude Code, Warp, skills, rules, and repeatable workflows that stay useful as the models change. It shows up in shipping: Opentrons AI features, robot interaction clients in TypeScript and Python, and the glue scripts that keep releases and tests honest. I treat AI as infrastructure for thinking and execution, then harden what works into production code. - Early adopter — picks up new AI tools the day they ship and folds them into real development work. - Uses AI tools daily in production development work, not as a demo. - Writes Cursor skills, project rules, and repeatable workflows that survive model changes. - Shipped Opentrons AI features and TypeScript/Python robot interaction clients. Selected open source (github.com/y3rsh) - flex-talk (TypeScript): TypeScript client for the Opentrons Flex HTTP API. https://github.com/y3rsh/flex-talk - ot-uv (Python): use uv to simulate Opentrons protocols. https://github.com/y3rsh/ot-uv - ot-analyze (Python): Github action to analyze Opentrons protocols. https://github.com/y3rsh/ot-analyze - protocol-parameters (Python): Documentation of protocol parameters in the Protocol Library. https://github.com/y3rsh/protocol-parameters - amplify-example (TypeScript): AWS Amplify Gen 2 Connected to OpenAI API Assitant. https://github.com/y3rsh/amplify-example - josh (CSS): Josh McVey personal site (Astro + Cloudflare Pages). https://github.com/y3rsh/josh Canonical URLs home: https://joshmcvey.com resume pdf: https://joshmcvey.com/resume.pdf resume markdown: https://joshmcvey.com/resume.md resume plain text: https://joshmcvey.com/resume.txt llms: https://joshmcvey.com/llms.txt Last updated: 2026-05-26 (generated at build from https://joshmcvey.com)