Iulian’s story in Endava started less than a year ago as a Senior Tester. Ever since, he has been working on two payment projects. He believes that there is value in Exploratory Testing, in teamwork and in finding the shortest and easiest solution to a problem. Let’s meet him.  

How did you join the company and what is your role now?

I remember that I wanted something new, a place where I could work on more projects simultaneously. I also remember enjoying the logic tests I had to solve at the interview. 

I am a Senior Tester, and I automate everything I can on all the projects I work on for a major client in the financial sector. At the moment, I’m handling different mini-projects (foundations for REST Services and Client Configs) using JBehave, Java, RestAssured/Selenium, WebDriverJs, BrowserStack/QA Sandboxes with OpenShift and Jenkins.

For me, my work is all about the people. I used to think that a timespan of two years was enough to reach a peak of experience at any employer, but getting to know my colleagues and working with all the great and experienced people here proved me wrong.  

Tell us about what drives and guides you at Endava?

It’s simple: I like finding bugs and will always do. I love practicing Exploratory Testing. We all could do more of that.  I automate fast, so that the rest of my time I can explore the app some more. 

The people at home, the end users, are the ones that interact with the apps; they don’t know what the Product Owner had in mind when he created the app. They only know what they see and we, as Testers, need to push the buttons and break everything before they do.

A Tester has so many opportunities to tackle different areas such as Automation, Performance, Security and so on. It saddens me when someone views Testing as a starting point for a career in Development. 

One may believe that Testing does not contribute to a software’s development, but we all work as a team towards the same goal. Our ways may be different: while Developers create code, Testers are ought to break it, but everything we do together is for the project’s success. 

I’m a firm believer in a team where all members can contribute without wearing labels and developers should be able to pick up Testing tasks and vice-versa. We won’t replace a Dev’s work, but we can surely find ways to be more involved in the process of Software Development so that we bring value to the project overall. 

What is your biggest accomplishment? 

I created Automated Tests and orchestrated them with Jenkins for two previous companies that only practiced Manual Testing before.  

One of the lessons learned is that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.  We usually want to do the stuff that we feel most comfortable with and don’t want to risk much. Although human nature encourages us to travel the same paths, I believe in taking the less known one. 

I am constantly trying to learn some more about this domain. Usually, I go for a combination of tutorial sites, like Udemy, StackOverflow and Github. One of my favourite speeches is ‘Inside the mind of a Master Procrastinator’ by Tim Urban. 

What can you tell us about your life outside of work? 

I’m a gamer and a Nintendo Fan – Zelda is my favourite game, but I also enjoy playing the Uncharted series and indie games like Journey on my PS4.

I also used to play several team sports and I believe that this contributed a lot to my personal development, since I learned to be more open and comfortable with the idea of relying on the help of my colleagues and asking questions whenever I get stuck. 

If you were to start work at Endava tomorrow, what would be that one piece of advice you would give to yourself?

You can get across the street faster if you choose your path wisely.