Major Account Executive - Swagger

SmartBear BearQ wins 2026 CRN Tech Innovator award. Manisha Talwar August 05, 2026 SmartBear BearQ(TM), an agentic QA system, has won a 2026 CRN(R) Tech Innovator Award. CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, named BearQ a winner in the Application Development and DevOps category, calling it out among the most innovative technologies shaping the IT channel this year. AI has changed how fast software gets built, but for many organizations, testing hasn't kept pace. Seventy percent of software experts say application quality is already suffering as AI speeds up code creation, while 68% worry that faster AI-driven development will only widen the testing bottleneck, according to a recent SmartBear study, Closing the AI Software Quality Gap. That imbalance affects the entire software delivery pipeline because it functions like an assembly line. Speed up code generation without speeding up testing, and the gains at any one stage lack real impact. Instead, the pressure just piles up downstream, on QA teams, turning what should be efficiency gains into headaches. BearQ was built to close that gap. Why CRN recognized BearQ. The CRN Tech Innovator Awards honor products that show real technological differentiation and value to the solution provider channel. CRN's editorial team chose this year's winners from hundreds of submissions across 30 technology categories. BearQ was selected for its innovation, market differentiation, and measurable value for partners and customers. "The 2026 CRN Tech Innovator Awards winners represent the most innovative technologies driving the future of the IT channel," said Jennifer Follett, vice president, U.S. content and executive editor at CRN, The Channel Company. "These award-winning solutions demonstrate exceptional vision, technological ingenuity, and a commitment to solving real-world challenges for partners and customers." BearQ's agentic approach to QA. BearQ is an agentic QA system that autonomously explores, tests, and validates applications as they exist today, not against outdated scripts or specs. Its always-on QA agents, including the QA Lead Agent, Explorer Agent, and Tester Agent, map how an application actually behaves, generate and maintain tests, and validate real user journeys as the product evolves. That's a meaningful evolution from how most teams test today. Scripted automation tools only validate what engineers explicitly define, and they break the moment a UI or workflow shifts underneath them. BearQ starts from a different premise. It learns the application directly, discovers user journeys on its own, and keeps coverage current without someone rewriting scripts or updating specs every sprint. Teams decide what level of autonomy BearQ executes at. Configurable oversight lets QA and engineering leaders set where agents explore freely and where a human reviews before anything ships, so expanded coverage doesn't come at the cost of control. Many product engineering and QA teams are under pressure to test more without adding headcount or more script maintenance work. BearQ's combination of wider, adaptive coverage and configurable human oversight is what made the difference in earning this recognition. What's new with BearQ. As software development evolves, so will BearQ. Since launching in March, BearQ has added: * Greater configurability: Additional configurable guardrails, exclusion rules, and functional area focus controls let teams define exactly what BearQ should explore and what it should leave alone. * Cost governance: Workspace-level agent compute unit (ACU) tracking, project and team consumption visibility, and overage alerts help teams stay ahead of usage before hitting limits. * Deeper ecosystem connectivity: New integrations span CI/CD, GitHub, Atlassian, Azure DevOps (ADO), and MCP-enabled workflows. * Bidirectional MCP support: BearQ can now participate in broader agent ecosystems, not just take instructions from them. * Richer reporting: Workflow-level issue details are now tracked alongside BearQ's daily summaries and audit-ready reports. See what's next with BearQ Application integrity, validated by the channel. This win maps back to SmartBear's mission of helping teams achieve application integrity, the continuous, measurable assurance that software works as intended, at speed and scale. For SmartBear's channel partners, it's further proof that BearQ gives them a way to help customers modernize QA and clear testing bottlenecks as AI reshapes how software gets built. BearQ is available now. Start a free trial today and see how autonomous QA agents close the gap between how fast your team ships and how confidently you can test it.

Sauce Labs, Meticulous and Functionize: the latest vendor and product news. Artificial intelligence continues to reshape software testing, with vendors racing to build platforms that can validate AI-generated code, automate quality engineering and strengthen software assurance. This week's roundup includes fresh funding for Meticulous, a major new AI testing platform from Functionize, SmartBear's latest AI integrations, Elastic's independent testing success and more. Sauce Labs launches release assurance platform. Sauce Labs has launched AURA, an AI-powered release assurance platform designed to help enterprises verify AI-generated code at the pace it is produced. The company said AURA uses agentic AI to author, execute and analyse tests through an autonomous learning loop, integrating with existing CI/CD pipelines and DevOps workflows. Sauce Labs claims enterprise deployments have achieved 90% fewer production incidents, 47% faster release cycles and reclaimed 38% of engineering capacity. The launch accompanies a new study of 400 engineering leaders highlighting growing concern over AI-driven software quality, with more than half admitting they knowingly release code containing critical defects. Meticulous lands $15m. AI-powered testing startup Meticulous has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures to accelerate development of its autonomous software testing platform. Meticulous automatically creates and maintains end-to-end browser tests by observing how users interact with applications, dramatically reducing the effort traditionally required to build regression suites. The company, founded in 2021 in London, says its deterministic browser technology also helps eliminate flaky tests, serving a range of banks and financial firms, mostly in the UK. The investment reflects growing demand for automated verification as AI coding assistants generate ever larger volumes of software that still need independent validation before release. Functionize launches new testing agent. Functionize has unveiled Studio, a new AI-native software quality platform designed to act as an independent testing agent for applications built by both developers and AI coding assistants. Users describe what they want to validate in natural language, after which Studio generates, executes and maintains automated tests. The platform also automatically repairs tests as applications evolve. Functionize says the launch marks a shift towards autonomous quality assurance, where AI agents verify software produced by other AI agents. mabl extends AI assistance. Testing platform mabl has introduced additional AI-powered capabilities designed to simplify test authoring, debugging and maintenance. The new features help engineering teams create automated tests more quickly using natural language while providing AI-assisted recommendations when failures occur. The launch reflects the industry's wider move towards conversational software testing as the gap between code generation velocity and quality validation is widening. "Coding agents ship faster than any team in software history, but an agent grading its own work is biased toward shipping," warned mabl founder Dan Belcher. Tricentis strengthens AI testing. Tricentis has expanded its AI-powered testing portfolio with new capabilities designed to accelerate test creation and improve enterprise software validation. The latest enhancements use generative AI to help create, optimise and maintain automated tests while reducing manual effort across complex enterprise environments. The company continues to position AI as a way to improve testing productivity while maintaining governance over increasingly rapid software delivery. SmartBear expands testing ecosystem. SmartBear has announced a series of AI integrations spanning Anthropic Claude, GitHub, Atlassian Rovo and Amazon Web Services' Kiro development environment. The new integrations bring test generation, API governance and quality intelligence directly into AI-assisted development workflows, allowing developers to access testing information without leaving their coding environments. The move reflects the growing trend towards embedding quality assurance directly inside software engineering platforms. Keysight expands Eggplant AI. Keysight Technologies has added further AI capabilities to its Eggplant testing platform aimed at reducing maintenance across automated UI testing. The enhancements enable engineers to identify interface elements using natural language descriptions rather than brittle selectors, making automated tests more resilient as applications evolve. Applitools boosts autonomous testing. Applitools has expanded its autonomous testing capabilities, adding new AI-powered visual validation and test maintenance features. The company says the enhancements allow engineering teams to detect user interface changes more accurately while reducing false positives and ongoing maintenance effort. Visual AI continues to play an increasingly important role as AI-generated applications evolve more rapidly. Sonar deepens AI code assurance. Sonar has expanded its AI Code Assurance capabilities to help organisations validate software created by AI coding assistants. The platform combines static analysis, security scanning and code quality checks to identify defects before software reaches production, supporting organisations adopting AI-assisted development at scale. As AI accelerates coding, vendors increasingly see continuous verification rather than code generation as the key differentiator. This september in London. Why not become a QA Financial subscriber? It's entirely FREE Regulation & Compliance. Looking for more news on regulations and compliance requirements driving developments in software quality engineering at financial firms? Visit our dedicated Regulation & Compliance page here. Watch now. July 23, 2026 July 22, 2026 July 21, 2026 July 20, 2026 July 17, 2026 July 16, 2026

SmartBear names Dave Phillips Chief Revenue Officer to lead growth as AI raises the bar for software quality. Go-to-market leader of 20+ years will unify sales, customer success, and channel strategy to help customers build with confidence at AI speed and scale SOMERVILLE, Mass. - July 22, 2026 - SmartBear, helping teams build, test, and ship quality software at AI speed and scale, today announced the appointment of Dave Phillips as Chief Revenue Officer. In this role, Phillips will lead the company's global revenue growth, overseeing sales, customer success, renewals, channel partnerships, and go-to-market strategy as SmartBear continues to help organizations deliver application integrity in the age of AI-disrupted software development. As Chief Revenue Officer, Phillips will focus on deepening the trust of existing customers, bringing on new customers with the speed and urgency they need as they adopt AI in their SDLC, and doing so in lockstep with the company's channel, reseller, and marketplace partners to meet customers wherever they choose to buy. "Dave has earned the trust of our leadership team, our employees, and our customers by building strong teams, driving execution, and staying relentlessly focused on customer outcomes," said Dan Faulkner, CEO of SmartBear. "He brings deep sales expertise and a proven track record in customer success. As AI transforms how software is built and tested, application integrity is the standard the market needs to meet, and Dave's role is making sure our customers have access to the solutions that get them there." Phillips joined SmartBear nearly two years ago, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Renewals, where he strengthened customer retention, expanded strategic customer relationships, and helped build a customer-centric revenue organization. A proven go-to-market executive with more than 20 years of leadership experience, Phillips has led high-performing sales organizations across new business, expansion, and indirect channels. Prior to SmartBear, he served as Chief Revenue Officer at Alyce, where he led the revenue organization to more than 20% ARR growth and helped the company secure its Series B funding. He also led teams across all markets and sales motions at Quickbase, helping guide the company through two private equity-backed exits and growing revenue from $25M to $125M. "We're at a pivotal moment for software development," said Dave Phillips, chief revenue officer at SmartBear. "AI is letting teams build faster than ever, but it's making it harder to trust what's being shipped. I've watched that gap widen on both the vendor and customer side, and it won't close on its own. That's the problem I want to spend my time solving - helping teams move at the speed AI now demands without losing confidence in what they build and ship."