VU Lam

Founder and CEO Katalon

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Vu Lam is the founder and chief executive of Katalon, the Atlanta-headquartered test automation platform now used by more than 30,000 teams worldwide, with GE Digital, Vodafone, UnitedHealthcare, Nvidia and Nasdaq among its customers. Katalon is the most visible of a long sequence of companies he has built, and the sequence has a consistent shape: US-based commercial organisations built on engineering capacity in Vietnam, which he has spent close to two decades developing. He began his career as a member of technical staff at Bell Labs after degrees in electrical engineering from Illinois and Purdue, co-founded the consultancy Paragon Solutions in the 1990s, ran offshore services for First Consulting Group, and then founded KMS Technology in 2008, QASymphony in 2011 and Grove HR subsequently. He sits on the board of Endeavor Vietnam.

Career Highlights

• Founder and chief executive of Katalon, alongside co-founder and chief operating officer Uy Tran, at the company’s Atlanta headquarters.
• Katalon serves more than 30,000 teams globally and counts GE Digital, Vodafone, UnitedHealthcare, Red Bull, Petronas, Nvidia and Nasdaq among its customers.
• The platform was recognised in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant, has held G2 Leader status for more than fourteen consecutive quarters, is a two-time Deloitte Fast 500 honoree, and has been Great Place to Work certified three years running.
• Founded KMS Technology in 2008 and remains its chairman.
• Founded QASymphony in 2011; the company later merged with Tricentis.
• Founder and chairman of Grove HR.
• Co-founder and partner of Paragon Solutions, LLC, 1995 to 2003, and vice president of offshore services at First Consulting Group, 2003 to 2007.
• Began his career at Bell Labs as a member of technical staff, 1989 to 1995.
• Board member of Endeavor Vietnam.

Professional Journey

Lam took a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1989 and an MSEE from Purdue the following year, and went straight into Bell Labs as a member of technical staff — a research environment of a kind that barely exists now, and one that shaped a generation of American systems engineers. He stayed six years.

In 1995 he left to co-found Paragon Solutions, a consultancy he was a partner in until 2003, and then spent four years at First Consulting Group as vice president of offshore services. That role is the pivot point of the career. Running offshore delivery meant building and managing engineering capacity outside the United States, and it gave him both the operating model and the conviction that he would apply to everything afterwards.

KMS Technology, founded in 2008, was the vehicle. Its premise was that Vietnamese software engineering, given access to the practices and standards he had learned in the US, could compete internationally rather than merely undercut. He has spoken about considering himself fortunate to have had a modern education and an American career, and about deliberately bringing that back to his home country. KMS became the engineering base from which a succession of products emerged, and he remains its chairman.

QASymphony followed in 2011, a test management software company built for the growing discipline of structured software quality assurance. It later merged with Tricentis, one of the larger consolidations in the testing tools market. Grove HR, a human resources platform, followed in the same pattern, with Lam as founder and chairman, and he has been associated with Kobiton, a mobile device testing company, on similar terms.

Katalon is where he returned to an operating chief executive role. The product addresses the same problem QASymphony did — software quality at scale — but from the automation side rather than the management side, and its growth has been in the direction the market moved, towards AI-assisted test generation and maintenance. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, led by Lam with co-founder Uy Tran as chief operating officer, Philippe Vincent as president and Tien Anh Nguyen as chief financial officer, and serves over 30,000 teams. Its external validation is unusually broad for a company of its size: a place in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant, sustained G2 Leader status, two Deloitte Fast 500 listings, and three consecutive years of Great Place to Work certification, alongside a partner ecosystem of more than 120 technology partners.

Alongside the companies he serves on the board of Endeavor Vietnam, the Vietnamese affiliate of the global network that selects and supports high-impact entrepreneurs — a role continuous with the thesis that has run through his whole career.

Education

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

B.S., Electrical Engineering, 1989

Purdue University

M.S.E.E., Electrical Engineering, 1990