Kumar Akash

As the Chief Operating Officer at Cyber1Armor, my focus is on building the organization with clarity and intent—driving strategy, operating structure, and execution across delivery, operations, and talent. We help organizations strengthen their Identity and Access Management (IAM) capabilities through a combination of strategic advisory, managed services, and skill-based talent solutions—always anchored in customer outcomes and delivery discipline. With 25+ years of experience at the intersection of technology, transformation, and leadership, I’ve learned that sustainable growth comes from strong operating foundations, aligned teams, and the ability to turn complexity into scalable, repeatable execution. My core focus areas include: - Scaling early-stage and growth-stage organizations with sound operating models - Building high-performing delivery teams and execution engines - Aligning business outcomes with technology and security strategy - Developing leaders and teams that can execute consistently at scale While fully committed to our current mission, I am always open to connecting with leaders and practitioners who care about intentional growth, customer-centric delivery, and meaningful transformation—particularly across IAM, IT operations, and enterprise technology services

IamWithAkash is my space to think out loud about Identity & Access Management, leadership, and intentional growth. IAM is more than tools—it’s about trust, discipline, and how organizations scale securely. Through podcasts and short conversations, I share lessons from the field, leadership reflections, and ideas shaped by years of building IAM delivery and managed services. This isn’t about theory. It’s about experience, execution, and outcomes. 🎧 If you care about IAM that actually works, you’ll feel at home here.

As Vice President of Delivery, I lead the fulfilment of client commitments and drive the development to maximise customer value. My responsibilities include strategic leadership, operational oversight, technology roadmap development, budget management, and providing pre-sales and sales support. Through close collaboration with senior leadership, cross-functional teams, and external partners, I ensure our delivery strategies align precisely with business goals and client expectations. • Leading Global Delivery team of 200+ IT professionals across different locations, to drive ~4.5 M portfolio with 26 different accounts. • Improved customer satisfaction scores by 25% through enhanced service delivery. • Implemented domain specific reusable assets that reduce time to market by 25%, significantly impacting revenue positively. • Commence of AI Adoption for a few client using Microsoft co-pilot, leading to a ~15% increase in process efficiency and performance as part of Go to market Strategy • Strategic leadership and operational oversight, technology roadmap development and providing pre-sales and sales support aligning with business goals to support CX (customer experience) and EX (Employee experience) • Boosted project delivery accuracy to 98% by implementing rigorous quality assurance. • Increased team productivity by 20% through the introduction of agile methodologies and effective performance metrics. • In addition to my strategic responsibility, as part of people management, I mentor and lead a high-performing delivery organization, prioritise professional growth, fostering a culture of continuous learning and development within our team to strengthen our enterprise-wide capabilities

As Director I led the Global Service Delivery Business and Quality Assurance team along with building and managing matured, scalable, and strategic CoE across People, Processes, Tools, and Technologies in the Identity Management Domain. Building shared services delivery model with effective global just-in-time BA/QA team, Instrumental in building strategic services road map, services offerings, right competency, capability and capacity to support business/testing activities globally.

As AVP - Managing ~3.5M portfolio in the organization. Leading Global BA/QA function in IAM domain, responsible for defining business requirements, developing Verification and Validation service offerings, and establishing and upgrading Scalable & Strategic CoE (Centre of Excellence). Responsible for supporting testing services delivery & developing service accelerators for IDM Domain across the services verticals.

Heading the Global Quality Assurance team along with building and managing matured, scalable & strategic TCoE (Testing center of excellence) across People, Process, Tools and Technologies in Identity Management Domain.

Building shared services delivery model with effective global QA team in identity and access management space, Instrumental in building strategic services road map, services offerings, right competency, capability & capacity to support testing activities globally.

• Managing QA activity for multimillion dollar releases from requirement to production with different phase of SDLC • Defined and Managed UAT process for one of the biggest program across the organization. Doubled the team output in 3 months. Build Integrated testing engineering team and process across different verticals. Implementation of Release Quality Management function. • Work on various matrix such as Defect Containment Rate, Defect removal efficiency to bring quality for products • Defined a new process for monthly releases with well-defined process for handing minor and patches releases in parallel. • Established and managed the Root Cause Analysis (RCA) team for production defects. • Developed environment strategy to better support release planning and automation testing. • Built an automation testing function to drive efficiency in the regression and function test phases.

• Setting QA practice line at organization for consolidating QA credentials and expertise to accelerate QA delivery • Conducting QA assessments to identify gaps in delivery, process and test artifacts followed by proposing short-term, mid-term and long-term milestones to fix the same • Creating QA roadmaps for projects for successfully delivering value driven QA output • Setting up metric driven QA delivery model for appropriate quality health check before releasing to production • Collaborating with product, development and release teams to define the QA dependencies and identifying risks and charting mitigation plan • Conducting quality reviews at organization level, documenting gaps and proposing solution

• Customer facing and front-ending QA teams to own end-to-end QA delivery • Setting up metric driven QA delivery model for appropriate quality health check before releasing to production

• Involved in Project Operational activities such as Requirement Gathering, Resource Management, SQA audit adherence • Interacting with client for requirement gathering, risk assessment and finalization of test specifications. • Communicated project status, issues, and risks to executives through daily/weekly status reports. • planning & scheduling, Test Environment setup , regression and functional testing, Maintenance and Post Production Support testing, Quality Management • Single point of contact for all the test management activity of the project, following agile methodology (SCRUM). • Automation Planning and Implementation for different phase of Sprint cycle, done Automation for regression cycle.

 Managing a team of test engineers.  SPOC for all the projects following Agile methodology (SCRUM).  Test planning, Test execution, Defect Management, status reporting for all the projects.

 Handled a team of 4 test engineers.  Travelled onsite multiple times for project transition for Europe to India  Prepare a proposal and provided recommendation of improve testing practices

- Involved preparation of functional specification and Design Documents of System admin Module. Took Control of Complete Business Logic and Front-end Representation from Designing to Coding, Implementation and successful integration of the module with the other modules. - Involve unit and Integration testing of the Application.

o Involve in Capturing of Client Requirements, Test Plan preparation o Involve manual testing of the Application.

Engineering