Andrei joined Endava in our Bucharest office as a Software Tester in 2014. Without a clear idea of where his career would take him, he embraced the challenges, the uncertainty and the unknown and ended up doing all the cool and interesting stuff that Endava empowers him to do: working on testing frameworks, sharing his knowledge through Pass It On or training sessions and simply having the freedom to pursue his goals. 

When did you join the company and what was your career path so far?

I’ve been in Endava for almost five years and it has surpassed all of my expectations, in terms of years I was planning to stay in a company and the professional opportunities I was offered. I have never thought I’d stay more than one or two years in a company, given how fast people in our industry change jobs. 

When I joined Endava, back in 2014, I wanted to continue on the path of automated testing, but my first project was for a client who wanted only manual testing because of the complexity of the domain he worked in. I tried to bring the idea of writing automated tests several times through POC or in meetings but got refused every time. My strategy then shifted towards working harder to prove to the client that we are to be trusted and we can handle the extra “burden” of writing automated tests. My team was fantastic, it had a great chemistry and a good rhythm, meeting all our objectives required by the client, even in very tight deadlines. 

In the end, this experience served me well because on my next project we had with the same client, the POC was a success and I was able to focus more on automation, delivering a custom testing framework. 

Nowadays I am a Test Consultant and Practice Area Lead for the Test Automation Practice in Bucharest and I’m trying to bring the same spirit of innovation and pro-activeness in everything I do.

Tell us about what drives and guides you at Endava?

Coming to work with a smile on my face, that’s my goal. If what I do does not please me, then I will absolutely try to change something. Every time I wanted to change something at Endava, I was always given the possibility to do so and the people around me were highly supportive. That is a truly empowering feeling. 

Another thing that I like is to train, teach and help my colleagues. I always try to make time for such important matters: I love delivering training sessions, I try to give my best solution when colleagues have problems on their project and I try to share what others taught me. 

My first workshop was on Selenium, back in 2014, and ever since, I have delivered training sessions on API, Maven, Git, Jenkins and many other topics. I believe it’s a double win: you learn while you teach, it’s not a one-way knowledge transfer.

Before starting at Endava, I was relatively shy and didn’t have much experience with public speaking but with some good counselling and the right training at the right time, I think I managed to overcome most of my fears.