About Break the Build & Me

Engineering Quality in the Age of AI

Hi, I’m Thomas Howard; a Quality Engineering leader redefining how teams build, test, and ship software in an AI-driven world.

For 15+ years, I’ve lived at the intersection of automation, infrastructure, and leadership; turning brittle pipelines and flaky test suites into intelligent, self-healing systems that scale with confidence.

I don’t just test software; I engineer quality into every layer of delivery; from CI/CD design to AI-augmented testing to how teams think about reliability itself.

The Mission (and a Little Real Talk)

My goal is simple:
To make modern Quality Engineering; powered by automation, data, and AI - accessible, effective, and indispensable.

Whether you’re:
🔹 An engineer trying to level up in automation and AI
🔹 A leader buried under tech debt and flaky pipelines
🔹 Or a founder chasing release confidence at scale

You’ll find frameworks, tools, and field-tested strategies here to help you deliver faster, with more trust and less chaos.

I’m not a guru. I’m a builder.
I still write code every day; and some of it’s still pure, glorious garbage. But every broken test, every failed deploy, is a lesson. “Fail fast, learn faster” isn’t a slogan; it’s a survival tactic.

Break the Build exists to share those lessons; from the real world, not theory; and to help teams evolve from testing to engineering quality.

What I Write About

AI-Augmented Quality Engineering

LLM-powered test generation, self-healing automation, traceability with GenAI, and intelligent test triage. Real experiments, real results; not hype.

CI/CD That Scales

Designing stable, fast, and intelligent pipelines; from GitHub Actions to AWS Fargate; that balance speed with trust.

Quality Strategy & Team Design

How to build modern QA orgs that evolve beyond “testing.” From shift-left practices to AI agents in production; I share playbooks for going from zero QA to full QE in under 24 months.

Leadership in the AI Era

Practical insights on leading technical teams through change; where quality, velocity, and AI all converge.

The Future of Testing

Breakdowns of emerging tools, frameworks, and trends reshaping how we build and validate software in 2025 and beyond.

Why It Matters

Software is moving faster than ever — but trust still moves slow.
My work — and this blog — sits at the intersection of those two truths.

If you care about building high-quality systems that ship fast, leading with data and curiosity, and using AI to make testing smarter (not just noisier) — you’re in the right place.

Stay in the Loop

No fluff, no filler, no guru; just real, battle-tested insights on building modern quality systems.

Have a question? I read every DM and email.
Email Me or Follow on LinkedIn + Subscribe to the Blog