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LRLana Rafaella

Sunnyvale, CA

Lana Rafaella

QA engineer turned AI product builder.

I build AI-powered products end-to-end — from concept and MVP to integrations and go-to-market — backed by 10+ years of software quality engineering at Meta, Google, and beyond.

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Portrait of Lana Rafaella

About

From testing software to building it

I'm a senior software QA engineer with 10+ years testing web and mobile products at companies like Meta, Google, and BeachBody — where I led a payment-engine migration and large-scale quality efforts across web and mobile.

Today I build AI-powered products end-to-end as a founder, taking ideas from concept and MVP to integrations and go-to-market with modern AI tooling. I recently completed the AI-Powered Data Analyst program at the California Institute of Career Development, blending deep QA rigor with data and AI.

Based in Sunnyvale, CA, I'm bilingual (English / Russian) and equally at home in fast-moving startups and large enterprises.

Based in
Sunnyvale, CA
Experience
10+ years in QA
Languages
English / Russian
Focus
AI product building

Education & Training

  • B.A. in Economics

    Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia

  • AI-Powered Data Analyst Program

    California Institute of Career Development

  • Data Science

    FUHSD, Fremont, CA

  • Selenium Python Automation Bootcamp

    DataCamp

Experience

A decade of shipping quality

  1. Founder / Product Lead · HOnly & Spiritual CaliforniaNow

    2025 — Present

    San Francisco & Sunnyvale, CA

    • Building two AI-powered products end-to-end — from concept and MVP to integrations and go-to-market. See the AI Projects section below.

  2. QA Data Analyst · Apni Mandi

    May 2025 — Dec 2025

    Fremont, CA

    • Consolidated multi-store datasets exceeding 600K SKUs, with extensive cleaning and normalization by barcode, product name, and category.
    • Built Power Query and PostgreSQL pipelines to merge, deduplicate, and standardize pricing, vendor, and product data from Excel and CSV sources.
    • Designed end-to-end QA processes for retail pricing systems, ensuring data integrity across multiple store catalogs.

  3. QA Strategy Consultant · Amberflo

    Feb 2025 — Apr 2025

    Palo Alto, CA

    • Shaped QA strategy and product validation for an AI-powered usage-based billing platform.
    • Partnered with engineering and customer success to close quality gaps and improve client onboarding.
    • Created and maintained QA projects in Jira and advised on AI-tool integration for QA operations.

  4. Senior Software QA Engineer · Meta / HCLTech

    Aug 2022 — Feb 2025

    Menlo Park, CA

    • Onsite QA lead for B2B (Billing) and the Payments Platform; led the Payment Engine migration from the QA side.
    • Tested Business Services and B2B features across Instagram, Facebook, and Meta Business Suite on mobile and web.
    • Defined scope, edge cases, and coverage; wrote plans for regression, smoke, and sanity testing, and reported test metrics to leadership.

  5. Senior Software QA Engineer · Hathaway

    Jan 2022 — Aug 2022

    San Luis Obispo, CA (Remote)

    • Ran functional, exploratory, and regression testing across web, mobile (iOS / Android), and Android TV.
    • Maintained Appium automation scripts and inspected API requests with Charles Proxy.
    • Tested location features via the Radar Maps platform and authored test cases in Zephyr / Jira.

  6. Senior Software QA Engineer · BeachBody

    Jun 2021 — Jan 2022

    Los Angeles, CA

    • Wrote API microservice test cases in TestRail and developed Postman scripts run as part of CI/CD.
    • Performed white-box testing of Lambda function responses and CloudWatch event validation.

  7. Senior Software QA Engineer · Google / Virtusa

    Jun 2019 — Jun 2021

    San Bruno, CA

    • Onsite point of contact for the iOS platform of the YouTube main app team.
    • Built test plans for new iOS features; ran functional, accessibility, i18n, E2E, and regression testing.
    • Conducted accessibility testing with VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA, and Accessibility Scanner.

  8. Senior Software QA Engineer · FnB Tech

    Sep 2017 — May 2019

    San Mateo, CA

    • Built Postman test collections and ran exploratory, functional, and regression testing across platforms.
    • Tested SQLPro backend updates, troubleshot via logs, and mentored junior testers.

  9. Software QA Engineer · ZeroIn Software

    2015 — 2017

    Concord, CA

    • Backend testing with SQL and API testing with Postman; analyzed Android logs via ADB and contributed to UX and competitive research.

  10. QA Analyst · Elfina

    2008 — 2015

    Yekaterinburg, Russia

    • Owned the QA lifecycle for a web-based e-commerce platform — functional, usability, and performance testing, plus CMS content updates.

AI Projects

Products I'm building

HOnly

Founder / Product Lead

An AI-powered conversational social app for meaningful human connection.

Developed the concept and product strategy for an AI-powered conversational social app focused on real, meaningful human connection — then designed and built the MVP end-to-end.

  • Designed the product structure, onboarding flow, core user experience, and feature set.
  • Created the matching logic, user-discovery criteria, privacy framework, and safety requirements.
  • Developed go-to-market strategy, brand positioning, and marketing campaigns.
AI ProductSocialMVPOnboardingGo-to-Market

Dec 2025 — Present · San Francisco, CA

Spiritual California

Co-Founder / Product & Integration Lead

A digital marketplace connecting people with spiritual and wellness practitioners.

Leading product development for a marketplace that connects users with vetted spiritual and wellness practitioners — owning everything from architecture to third-party integrations.

  • Designed the complete product structure, user flows, platform architecture, and MVP.
  • Manage integrations with Persona, Stripe, and other external platforms.
  • Define payment and practitioner onboarding workflows and administrative processes.
MarketplaceStripePersonaPaymentsIntegrations

Feb 2026 — Present · Sunnyvale, CA

Skills

What I work with

AI Tools

  • Claude Code
  • Claude Cowork
  • Claude Skills
  • ChatGPT
  • Cursor
  • Manus
  • AI Video (Seedance, Higgsfield, Kling, Veo)
  • Marketing Content Generation
  • MVP & Product Design

QA & Testing

  • Functional / UI / E2E
  • API Testing (Postman, Swagger)
  • Charles Proxy
  • Selenium & Appium
  • Accessibility (VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA)
  • Jira, Zephyr, TestRail
  • iOS (Xcode) & Android (ADB)
  • Sauce Labs
  • Chrome DevTools

Data & Cloud

  • SQL (Postgres, MySQL, Oracle)
  • Python (Pandas, NumPy)
  • Power Query
  • Tableau & Power BI
  • Advanced Excel
  • AWS (Lambda, EC2, S3, DynamoDB)
  • CloudWatch
  • Git & Confluence

Passions

What drives me

Beyond the work itself, I'm driven by building technology that brings people closer rather than further apart — it's the heart of both HOnly and Spiritual California.

Lately I'm especially energized by AI video production — creating short-form video ads for Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook with tools like Seedance, Higgsfield, Kling, and Veo.

I love the craft of quality. I've spent years mentoring junior testers and raising the bar for the teams I join, and I'm a perpetual learner — most recently completing an AI-Powered Data Analyst program.

I enjoy working across cultures and languages as a bilingual English / Russian speaker, bridging fast-moving startups and large enterprises.

Contact

Let's connect

Have a role, a project, or an idea worth building? I'd love to hear from you.

lana.rafaella03@gmail.com
Email meLinkedInDownload résumé

Based in Sunnyvale, CA · linkedin.com/in/lana-rafaella