About me
Hi I’m Callum, a quality engineer in London!
I’ve spent over 17 years in software quality, going from manual testing through automation and in to quality engineering and coaching. The whole time I’ve argued the same thing: that quality is something that the whole team owns, not a process you bolt on at the end or a gate one person stands in front of.
I write, speak and generally won’t shut up about testing, quality engineering and building engineering cultures that actually include people. Recently I’ve been asking the hard question “are our organisations really ready for AI?”
What I do
I help start ups and scale ups to build quality strategies that work in the real world. That means working to what’s “good enough” for the context, not chasing gold plated perfection that ships too late to matter.
As a Quality Coach and Staff engineer I spend a lot of my time making other people better; mentoring leaders, running workshops and building the tools and frameworks that teams actually use. I stay hands on with the code and the tooling too, because I want to maintain my engineering credibility and skills. I’d rather grow ten people into quality practitioners than be the one person who hoards the knowledge.
When I’m not building quality I’m probably being a kick-ass Dungeons and Dragons games master or explaining to someone why Ramone the Testing Otter is an awesome quality mascot.
Speaking & Workshops
I’m an experienced international and keynote conference speaker covering a wide range of technical and strategic topics:
- Quality engineering
- AI enablement within quality practices
- Workshops to introduce testing tooling
- Diversity, inclusion and visibility in tech
- Creative analogies from gaming to explain testing
Recordings of my talks are available on my talks page.
Selected recognition
- HUSTEF 2026 Rising Star Keynote – won by industry vote
- TestDrive QA Awards 2026 QA Advocate of the Year – honorary mention
- Agile Testing Days 2025 Top 10 talk – voted by attendees
- Tester of the Day – named twice by the community
- #IconsOfQuality – featured by BrowserStack
- Ministry of Testing Software Quality Engineering Certificate – course contributor
Selected Work
Hote take: You’re not ready for QE
(Keynote, PeersCon 2025)
A hard look at why many testing professionals are misaligned with what modern engineering teams actually need, and how to rebuild trust and credibility.
Creating a Playwright framework with AI
(Article, 2026)
A practical walkthrough of an AI-driven Playwright framework I built for efficient E2E testing in teams adopting AI. Hands-on engineering rather than theory.
Quality Engineering with AI
(Article, 2026)
Where AI is reshaping quality engineering and the testing strategies I advocate for when teams build features with it and where to get started with using AI to enable QE in development.
Work with me
I’m open to conference talks, keynote speeches and speaking within organisations on quality topics.
If you’ve got thoughts on any of this (or want to discuss if it’s “all just testing”) then reach out. I love to have meaningful conversations.