Hi, I'm David Mello
Director of Quality Engineering by day — home automator, aspiring ninja warrior, and backyard birder by night. I write about my professional interests (software test automation, quality assurance) and personal interests (home automation, birds, and nature travels).
What I've been up to lately
Early 2026 - The year has started off busy already! I've been doing all my start of year adulting chores; insurance bills, taxes, dentist cleanings to get my plate clear for more fun and creative things.
During the holiday season I was gifted a bird bath which has attracted more grackles and bluejays. With spring approaching I'm starting to get the itch to revamp my backyard and refresh the butterfly garden and maybe add a fingerlime tree (seems like a unique/cool citrus). I'm getting better on the "salmon ladder" ninja warrior obstacles and have been doing a lot of fingertip hang training to get better at some trickier "cliffhanger" obstacles. I also finally got back into my 5k race mode and ran the Coconut Creek Butterfly Run which happened to be on the coldest morning in recent South Florida history.
At work, investments in metrics collection have been paying off to help inform where to focus testing investments. AI innovation continues to be a big focus in all areas. We've been able to leverage AI tooling and agents to accelerate the implementation in some of the quality practices we've been evangelizing. I'm also excited to be heading to StarEast this year to hear how others in the industry have been leveraging AI.
Lastly, I need to start making more time for personal projects and hobbies and start making more YouTube content. I've been having great ideas I need to get out there.
My Professional Journey
I first got the bug for software testing while working part time technical support while pursuing my degree in Management Information Systems. The systems thinking training and broad technical exposure the MIS degree provided combined with exposure to customer support issues and my empathetic want to find and prevent the source of the issues led me to get my start in Quality Assurance at TradeStation where I was fortunate enough to work with excellent mentors and leaders.
After nearly 9 years I found my next opportunity at Ultimate Software, attracted by their investments in test architecture, training, and research. I was fortunate to learn from and work alongside some of the best test architects and automation engineers in the industry at a time of massive growth and innovation in the company's move to cloud SaaS as well as scaling automation. There I learned how to build and lead teams, design, scale and implement test frameworks, and people first culture.
After 12 years at Ultimate Software/UKG, I joined Duck Creek Technologies to lead the modernization of their testing frameworks and practices. My team and I have successfully extended Nightwatch.js to replace and modernize the internal UI testing tool and are currently implementing Playwright to do the same, but leverage AI-assisted testing. We've also been busy helping teams establish a culture of quality; testing at all levels (unit, integration, systems, API), setting up pipelines. It's an exciting time — AI is reshaping what test automation can do, and I'm focused on making sure my teams are at the front of that wave.