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Miroslav started his career 4 years ago as a Junior Tester in our office in Sofia. Gaining expertise in numerous subdomains and working on major projects in various sectors, helped him become not only a highly regarded professional, but also a greatly appreciated colleague. Discover Miroslav’s story, the challenges he faced and lessons he learned over the years and find out how it is like to be working in an environment, where your colleagues are also your friends.

Tell us about your story in Endava

Starting my career 4 years ago in the organization as a brand-new junior (no experience at all), my personal and professional path developed dramatically and I went through numerous transitions to become the professional I am today.

Over the years I wanted to explore numerous possibilities and gain experience. The first opportunity showed up when I became Release and Configuration Manager for our office in Sofia. My job consisted of supporting my colleagues with all internal tools they were using in their day-to-day activities. In addition to administrating these tools I also got the chance to work as a Scrum Master on one of the major accounts in the banking domain. Seeing how eager I was in terms of processes and quality, the local leadership team soon decided I was a good fit for the Process Quality Assurance Officer role. This gave me the possibility of interacting with all teams and employees, while supporting and guiding them on how processes should work and what type of process, template or guideline could streamline their work. Soon after this I joined the Process Improvement Group, being involved in discussing and resolving process- and project-related topics, which aimed to establish and maintain process definitions and to encourage all employees to strive for improvement and have a quality-oriented mind-set.

Currently, I am happy to work again within the testing discipline as a Senior Tester and continue to learn and explore. All the knowledge and skills I gained in various areas like Testing (both automation and manual), Process Quality Assurance and CMMi, TFS/Jira/SharePoint Administration, Configuration Management and as a Scrum Master, are for sure an important part of every new journey I start.

I also think that everything I have read or seen had an effect on my career path. GiANT Worldwide tools, workshop and core process for example helped me understand myself better by discovering my strengths and weaknesses and by learning how to give and receive feedback and how to solve problems by searching the root cause. I learned what it takes to be a good leader and how to continuously strive for more. I realized that we are all different by nature and nurture, and people should not expect the change in others, but can only require it from themselves.

The most important thing is that Endava supported and encouraged me all the way, at every moment of my career path so far. I would never have expected that all my daily activities would bring me such joy and the organizational culture would fit so well with my expectations of a healthy work atmosphere and experience. Of course there were many unexpected situations over the years, but the most important lesson for me was that I was able to extract only the positive aspects from all situations, which made me stronger and better as a professional and a person.

The most exciting project I was involved in so far (and I am still working on it) is in the payments domain where we are building an API to be used by our client`s partners for money transfer. The first challenge here was to build an automated set of tests and install them into the continuous integration pipeline. This improved my skills in automation testing, reporting and building configuration and performance testing.  Next, I will deliver a workshop to pass on this knowledge to my colleagues within my Delivery Unit location (and beyond).

 

Where does your motivation come from?

My drive has always been to see smart and warm people working hard to accomplish one common goal. I like the fact that when you do your job well, even if this is not so complex, you can see appreciation and respect in people`s eyes and not only that - but you also get a direct feedback, which gives you the confidence and strive to do it even better next time.

The feeling that people need your support and help is priceless. Another thing that made me very proud was back in 2015 when together with two colleagues from Sofia, I received an excellence award for being a role model due to outstanding performance during the year and innovative problem-solving.

Besides this award, if I reflect on all feedback that I received over the years, I think I could sum these up into describing me as a fast learning person, who is highly committed, and dedicated to his work. Being supportive, easy going and positive with others is also something that I think defines me.

What about you outside of work? What do you enjoy doing and how does that contribute to your day to day job?

I am a big fan of RPG gaming and any kind of active team sports. I am also very interested in movies, I even starred in one before. I love music in any form and genre, not only listen to it, but also singing. Recording covers of my favourite songs and doing karaoke with friends is one of my most loved activities.

However, the perfect evening for me consists either in going out with friends, having fun, talking, laughing and maybe playing some games, or in being a couch potato and watching TV with my girlfriend. Most of my friends are also my colleagues, so when I go to work I am eager to meet my friends. This allows me to communicate easier with the people around me, making my day-to-day activities and tasks definitively more enjoyable and nurturing my strive for accomplishments on both a professional and personal level.

Let’s say you were to start work at Endava tomorrow. What advice should lead your first steps towards success?

Be yourself, always try to help if you can and never quit a challenge.

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