Colleague spotlight: meet Sunil Bagga
I work as a QA Manager on one of our long-standing customer accounts with IAG Loyalty. As part of this, I support the QA strategy and the delivery of all test activity across the Avios platform. I’m responsible for around ten different QAs which are split across various skill sets throughout our delivery teams, including functional QAs, Senior QAs, Lead QAs and our automation team with a focus on front and back-end test automation capabilities. As a team, we do a lot of work introducing and improving efficiencies across the QA process, innovating the current landscape of technologies that are trending and introducing as much autonomy in our release and deployment pipelines as possible. We incorporate our tests into those pipelines with the overall aim of reducing as much manual effort as possible. As part of this, my responsibility is to manage the test output across the delivery teams as well as guide, support and motivate the team, making sure that we’re adding value to the customer.
Alongside my role as a QA Manager, I’m also a Community Lead, looking after our QA community at Leighton. I help to build our community to provide a support network for our colleagues, not necessarily those just working within QA roles, but any colleague in any capacity across the business with an interest in QA. Over recent months we’ve seen a lot of increase in engagement, with some great examples of colleagues showcasing their skills through workshops and calls who are passionate about highlighting their capabilities across their customer projects, so it seems to be adding a lot of value internally.
I joined Leighton three years ago, having previously done a lot of contract-based work. Before starting at Leighton, I was generally happy continuing my work this way, but after having an initial conversation with the recruitment team, I found the role and the product I would potentially be starting on to be interesting. As part of the interview process, I had to deliver a presentation to the product team at IAG Loyalty, which was focused on an e-commerce product with multiple integrations, something that I have a lot of expertise in delivering. Getting to know some of the Leighton team throughout the recruitment process was also something that strongly impacted my decision to join. They immediately made me feel comfortable and gave me a real motivation to start working on the product I still find myself working on now. Three years down the line and I’m still here, doing what I love. I think that’s a real reflection on the business and our dedication to nurturing our talent, as before joining I was quite happy working in contractor-based roles, moving on every couple of years. The opportunity to be a Community Lead has also given me the platform to grow my own skill set, whilst pushing me slightly out of my comfort zone. Seeing the progress we’ve made has been really rewarding and this is something that I hope we can keep growing.
I’ve always been interested in tech and have always approached things in quite an analytical way. I studied computer science at university and did a lot of projects building applications and websites, which I enjoyed. When I graduated, I had the choice of either going down the developer route, or the QA route, but at the time I didn’t feel like the technical side of becoming a developer in terms of learning programming languages and understanding all the new technologies that were coming our were right for me. It was at that point I decided to pursue a career in QA. At the beginning I was involved in delivering test capabilities or running proof of concepts on automation tool sets, but found I really excelled in this when I joined Capgemini where I was in a technical consultancy role, delivering QA implementations and test capabilities across several different organisations that I worked with. Throughout the earlier years of my career, I grew to like the management side of things and as someone who’s quite hands-on I like to have a say in how we should be approaching the delivery of our QA practices across a product. I’m always open to group forum discussions as well as there may be an alternative way of looking at things.
Technical skills are, of course, crucial in this role, so making sure you’re constantly up to date with the latest trends and technologies is important so you’re never on the back-foot. I also think it is important to be personable and be passionate about what you do. You certainly don’t have to be the most outspoken, but I think it’s important that if you say you’re going to do something, you do it. I’ve often found that by being yourself makes it a lot easier to build better relationships across the workplace.
From a client perspective, we’re now delivering strategic capabilities across multiple product teams within the platform, with our team growing from around five QAs to ten. Supporting those teams and driving consistency has become one of the biggest challenges as we have several different consultancies working together, so trying to reduce any barriers of friction around politics in terms of how we’re all working together can be hard. Being in this role has helped me to understand the potential challenges of friction and the best ways to deal with it. From a technical perspective, we’ve become much more innovative in terms of delivering test capability and reducing manual test efforts. Understanding the product and the integrations have become crucial when supporting the team. I’m fortunate enough to work with some really talented individuals who have really allowed me to step back from the automation side of things, so I can focus on the strategic wider context. From a Leighton perspective, my role as a Community Lead has also evolved. I now work a lot closer with the rest of the Community Leads as well as the Executive Leadership Team, often working through different operational issues that we may face. As a growing business, I think it is important to set those foundations of solving challenges now and face those everyday issues together.
On my current project we’ve recently been able to implement a mocking capability for our Cyprus test environment. This approach removed third-party dependencies, significantly improving efficiency and saving valuable time. Collaborating with some of my Leighton colleagues to define the implementation strategy made this one a particularly rewarding experience.
I enjoy solving problems and helping people improve processes, particularly when there are pain points across multiple teams. I like to resolve things, and having the luxury of working alongside talented individuals means we can expose any issues and collaborate across the whole team, not just the QAs, to try and resolve them. If we need technical support from development teams, I want to make sure my team feels confident enough to ask for help if they need it. Whilst I understand the importance of increasing revenue in a business, I want to make sure I can help to add as much real value to the client as possible and really highlight the impactful work our QAs are doing.
I think our co-location days are a great idea. As an organisation with a lot of remote colleagues based across the country, having the opportunity to meet up at the different Cubo offices each month provides a chance for that face-to-face interaction. From a social aspect, Leighton really go above and beyond to make sure colleagues don’t feel isolated. Having never worked in an organisation that goes to those lengths before joining Leighton, it’s something really refreshing to be a part of.
When I stood up and delivered a talk at our company day last year, speaking about the test automation capability we are delivering for IAG Loyalty. This was nerve wracking as it’s completely different to when you’re speaking remotely through a screen, but it’s something I’m glad I did. I’ve found that the more public speaking I do, the more confident I get as a person, and it makes you realise that people do have a shared interest in what you’re speaking about.
I’m happy with where I’m at currently in terms of my role as a QA Manager. That being said, I do want to explore the option of becoming a Solutions Architect at some point in the future. There are several steps I feel I’d need to take in order to achieve this, like completing my AWS certifications and looking to get some sort of experience within Leighton. I’m already applying some aspects of a Solutions Architect role on my client project; however, I do feel like there’s still room for improvement in terms of my technical knowledge, but that’s up to me to grow and develop those relevant skills.
I’m currently on a bit of a fitness and health transformation. I’ve got a competition with my brother-in-law to see who can lose the most weight by the start of May, the loser must pay for a very expensive meal out at a fancy restaurant!
I’ve got two daughters, so I enjoy spending as much time with them as I can. Away from spending time with my family, I play poker and hang out with my friends.
I probably spend a lot more time supporting production incidences and helping with solution designs than some would expect someone within a QA role to do. But this is just part of my role and I’m more than happy to go above and beyond as I’ve got ambitions to spread my skill set outside of the QA profession as well.
Just be yourself, don’t try and put on a persona. Authenticity builds stronger relationships and helps you grow in a way that feels natural. People appreciate honesty, and staying true to yourself will always take you further than trying to be someone you’re not.
Keep an eye on new technologies and try to expose yourself to as many different areas in QA as possible so you can see what interests you. Also, be as open to learning as possible. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and reach out to people if you don’t know something.
I work as a QA Manager on one of our long-standing customer accounts with IAG Loyalty. As part of this, I support the QA strategy and the delivery of all test activity across the Avios platform. I’m responsible for around ten different QAs which are split across various skill sets throughout our delivery teams, including functional QAs, Senior QAs, Lead QAs and our automation team with a focus on front and back-end test automation capabilities. As a team, we do a lot of work introducing and improving efficiencies across the QA process, innovating the current landscape of technologies that are trending and introducing as much autonomy in our release and deployment pipelines as possible. We incorporate our tests into those pipelines with the overall aim of reducing as much manual effort as possible. As part of this, my responsibility is to manage the test output across the delivery teams as well as guide, support and motivate the team, making sure that we’re adding value to the customer.
Alongside my role as a QA Manager, I’m also a Community Lead, looking after our QA community at Leighton. I help to build our community to provide a support network for our colleagues, not necessarily those just working within QA roles, but any colleague in any capacity across the business with an interest in QA. Over recent months we’ve seen a lot of increase in engagement, with some great examples of colleagues showcasing their skills through workshops and calls who are passionate about highlighting their capabilities across their customer projects, so it seems to be adding a lot of value internally.
I joined Leighton three years ago, having previously done a lot of contract-based work. Before starting at Leighton, I was generally happy continuing my work this way, but after having an initial conversation with the recruitment team, I found the role and the product I would potentially be starting on to be interesting. As part of the interview process, I had to deliver a presentation to the product team at IAG Loyalty, which was focused on an e-commerce product with multiple integrations, something that I have a lot of expertise in delivering. Getting to know some of the Leighton team throughout the recruitment process was also something that strongly impacted my decision to join. They immediately made me feel comfortable and gave me a real motivation to start working on the product I still find myself working on now. Three years down the line and I’m still here, doing what I love. I think that’s a real reflection on the business and our dedication to nurturing our talent, as before joining I was quite happy working in contractor-based roles, moving on every couple of years. The opportunity to be a Community Lead has also given me the platform to grow my own skill set, whilst pushing me slightly out of my comfort zone. Seeing the progress we’ve made has been really rewarding and this is something that I hope we can keep growing.
I’ve always been interested in tech and have always approached things in quite an analytical way. I studied computer science at university and did a lot of projects building applications and websites, which I enjoyed. When I graduated, I had the choice of either going down the developer route, or the QA route, but at the time I didn’t feel like the technical side of becoming a developer in terms of learning programming languages and understanding all the new technologies that were coming our were right for me. It was at that point I decided to pursue a career in QA. At the beginning I was involved in delivering test capabilities or running proof of concepts on automation tool sets, but found I really excelled in this when I joined Capgemini where I was in a technical consultancy role, delivering QA implementations and test capabilities across several different organisations that I worked with. Throughout the earlier years of my career, I grew to like the management side of things and as someone who’s quite hands-on I like to have a say in how we should be approaching the delivery of our QA practices across a product. I’m always open to group forum discussions as well as there may be an alternative way of looking at things.
Technical skills are, of course, crucial in this role, so making sure you’re constantly up to date with the latest trends and technologies is important so you’re never on the back-foot. I also think it is important to be personable and be passionate about what you do. You certainly don’t have to be the most outspoken, but I think it’s important that if you say you’re going to do something, you do it. I’ve often found that by being yourself makes it a lot easier to build better relationships across the workplace.
From a client perspective, we’re now delivering strategic capabilities across multiple product teams within the platform, with our team growing from around five QAs to ten. Supporting those teams and driving consistency has become one of the biggest challenges as we have several different consultancies working together, so trying to reduce any barriers of friction around politics in terms of how we’re all working together can be hard. Being in this role has helped me to understand the potential challenges of friction and the best ways to deal with it. From a technical perspective, we’ve become much more innovative in terms of delivering test capability and reducing manual test efforts. Understanding the product and the integrations have become crucial when supporting the team. I’m fortunate enough to work with some really talented individuals who have really allowed me to step back from the automation side of things, so I can focus on the strategic wider context. From a Leighton perspective, my role as a Community Lead has also evolved. I now work a lot closer with the rest of the Community Leads as well as the Executive Leadership Team, often working through different operational issues that we may face. As a growing business, I think it is important to set those foundations of solving challenges now and face those everyday issues together.
On my current project we’ve recently been able to implement a mocking capability for our Cyprus test environment. This approach removed third-party dependencies, significantly improving efficiency and saving valuable time. Collaborating with some of my Leighton colleagues to define the implementation strategy made this one a particularly rewarding experience.
I enjoy solving problems and helping people improve processes, particularly when there are pain points across multiple teams. I like to resolve things, and having the luxury of working alongside talented individuals means we can expose any issues and collaborate across the whole team, not just the QAs, to try and resolve them. If we need technical support from development teams, I want to make sure my team feels confident enough to ask for help if they need it. Whilst I understand the importance of increasing revenue in a business, I want to make sure I can help to add as much real value to the client as possible and really highlight the impactful work our QAs are doing.
I think our co-location days are a great idea. As an organisation with a lot of remote colleagues based across the country, having the opportunity to meet up at the different Cubo offices each month provides a chance for that face-to-face interaction. From a social aspect, Leighton really go above and beyond to make sure colleagues don’t feel isolated. Having never worked in an organisation that goes to those lengths before joining Leighton, it’s something really refreshing to be a part of.
When I stood up and delivered a talk at our company day last year, speaking about the test automation capability we are delivering for IAG Loyalty. This was nerve wracking as it’s completely different to when you’re speaking remotely through a screen, but it’s something I’m glad I did. I’ve found that the more public speaking I do, the more confident I get as a person, and it makes you realise that people do have a shared interest in what you’re speaking about.
I’m happy with where I’m at currently in terms of my role as a QA Manager. That being said, I do want to explore the option of becoming a Solutions Architect at some point in the future. There are several steps I feel I’d need to take in order to achieve this, like completing my AWS certifications and looking to get some sort of experience within Leighton. I’m already applying some aspects of a Solutions Architect role on my client project; however, I do feel like there’s still room for improvement in terms of my technical knowledge, but that’s up to me to grow and develop those relevant skills.
I’m currently on a bit of a fitness and health transformation. I’ve got a competition with my brother-in-law to see who can lose the most weight by the start of May, the loser must pay for a very expensive meal out at a fancy restaurant!
I’ve got two daughters, so I enjoy spending as much time with them as I can. Away from spending time with my family, I play poker and hang out with my friends.
I probably spend a lot more time supporting production incidences and helping with solution designs than some would expect someone within a QA role to do. But this is just part of my role and I’m more than happy to go above and beyond as I’ve got ambitions to spread my skill set outside of the QA profession as well.
Just be yourself, don’t try and put on a persona. Authenticity builds stronger relationships and helps you grow in a way that feels natural. People appreciate honesty, and staying true to yourself will always take you further than trying to be someone you’re not.
Keep an eye on new technologies and try to expose yourself to as many different areas in QA as possible so you can see what interests you. Also, be as open to learning as possible. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and reach out to people if you don’t know something.
I work as a QA Manager on one of our long-standing customer accounts with IAG Loyalty. As part of this, I support the QA strategy and the delivery of all test activity across the Avios platform. I’m responsible for around ten different QAs which are split across various skill sets throughout our delivery teams, including functional QAs, Senior QAs, Lead QAs and our automation team with a focus on front and back-end test automation capabilities. As a team, we do a lot of work introducing and improving efficiencies across the QA process, innovating the current landscape of technologies that are trending and introducing as much autonomy in our release and deployment pipelines as possible. We incorporate our tests into those pipelines with the overall aim of reducing as much manual effort as possible. As part of this, my responsibility is to manage the test output across the delivery teams as well as guide, support and motivate the team, making sure that we’re adding value to the customer.
Alongside my role as a QA Manager, I’m also a Community Lead, looking after our QA community at Leighton. I help to build our community to provide a support network for our colleagues, not necessarily those just working within QA roles, but any colleague in any capacity across the business with an interest in QA. Over recent months we’ve seen a lot of increase in engagement, with some great examples of colleagues showcasing their skills through workshops and calls who are passionate about highlighting their capabilities across their customer projects, so it seems to be adding a lot of value internally.
I joined Leighton three years ago, having previously done a lot of contract-based work. Before starting at Leighton, I was generally happy continuing my work this way, but after having an initial conversation with the recruitment team, I found the role and the product I would potentially be starting on to be interesting. As part of the interview process, I had to deliver a presentation to the product team at IAG Loyalty, which was focused on an e-commerce product with multiple integrations, something that I have a lot of expertise in delivering. Getting to know some of the Leighton team throughout the recruitment process was also something that strongly impacted my decision to join. They immediately made me feel comfortable and gave me a real motivation to start working on the product I still find myself working on now. Three years down the line and I’m still here, doing what I love. I think that’s a real reflection on the business and our dedication to nurturing our talent, as before joining I was quite happy working in contractor-based roles, moving on every couple of years. The opportunity to be a Community Lead has also given me the platform to grow my own skill set, whilst pushing me slightly out of my comfort zone. Seeing the progress we’ve made has been really rewarding and this is something that I hope we can keep growing.
I’ve always been interested in tech and have always approached things in quite an analytical way. I studied computer science at university and did a lot of projects building applications and websites, which I enjoyed. When I graduated, I had the choice of either going down the developer route, or the QA route, but at the time I didn’t feel like the technical side of becoming a developer in terms of learning programming languages and understanding all the new technologies that were coming our were right for me. It was at that point I decided to pursue a career in QA. At the beginning I was involved in delivering test capabilities or running proof of concepts on automation tool sets, but found I really excelled in this when I joined Capgemini where I was in a technical consultancy role, delivering QA implementations and test capabilities across several different organisations that I worked with. Throughout the earlier years of my career, I grew to like the management side of things and as someone who’s quite hands-on I like to have a say in how we should be approaching the delivery of our QA practices across a product. I’m always open to group forum discussions as well as there may be an alternative way of looking at things.
Technical skills are, of course, crucial in this role, so making sure you’re constantly up to date with the latest trends and technologies is important so you’re never on the back-foot. I also think it is important to be personable and be passionate about what you do. You certainly don’t have to be the most outspoken, but I think it’s important that if you say you’re going to do something, you do it. I’ve often found that by being yourself makes it a lot easier to build better relationships across the workplace.
From a client perspective, we’re now delivering strategic capabilities across multiple product teams within the platform, with our team growing from around five QAs to ten. Supporting those teams and driving consistency has become one of the biggest challenges as we have several different consultancies working together, so trying to reduce any barriers of friction around politics in terms of how we’re all working together can be hard. Being in this role has helped me to understand the potential challenges of friction and the best ways to deal with it. From a technical perspective, we’ve become much more innovative in terms of delivering test capability and reducing manual test efforts. Understanding the product and the integrations have become crucial when supporting the team. I’m fortunate enough to work with some really talented individuals who have really allowed me to step back from the automation side of things, so I can focus on the strategic wider context. From a Leighton perspective, my role as a Community Lead has also evolved. I now work a lot closer with the rest of the Community Leads as well as the Executive Leadership Team, often working through different operational issues that we may face. As a growing business, I think it is important to set those foundations of solving challenges now and face those everyday issues together.
On my current project we’ve recently been able to implement a mocking capability for our Cyprus test environment. This approach removed third-party dependencies, significantly improving efficiency and saving valuable time. Collaborating with some of my Leighton colleagues to define the implementation strategy made this one a particularly rewarding experience.
I enjoy solving problems and helping people improve processes, particularly when there are pain points across multiple teams. I like to resolve things, and having the luxury of working alongside talented individuals means we can expose any issues and collaborate across the whole team, not just the QAs, to try and resolve them. If we need technical support from development teams, I want to make sure my team feels confident enough to ask for help if they need it. Whilst I understand the importance of increasing revenue in a business, I want to make sure I can help to add as much real value to the client as possible and really highlight the impactful work our QAs are doing.
I think our co-location days are a great idea. As an organisation with a lot of remote colleagues based across the country, having the opportunity to meet up at the different Cubo offices each month provides a chance for that face-to-face interaction. From a social aspect, Leighton really go above and beyond to make sure colleagues don’t feel isolated. Having never worked in an organisation that goes to those lengths before joining Leighton, it’s something really refreshing to be a part of.
When I stood up and delivered a talk at our company day last year, speaking about the test automation capability we are delivering for IAG Loyalty. This was nerve wracking as it’s completely different to when you’re speaking remotely through a screen, but it’s something I’m glad I did. I’ve found that the more public speaking I do, the more confident I get as a person, and it makes you realise that people do have a shared interest in what you’re speaking about.
I’m happy with where I’m at currently in terms of my role as a QA Manager. That being said, I do want to explore the option of becoming a Solutions Architect at some point in the future. There are several steps I feel I’d need to take in order to achieve this, like completing my AWS certifications and looking to get some sort of experience within Leighton. I’m already applying some aspects of a Solutions Architect role on my client project; however, I do feel like there’s still room for improvement in terms of my technical knowledge, but that’s up to me to grow and develop those relevant skills.
I’m currently on a bit of a fitness and health transformation. I’ve got a competition with my brother-in-law to see who can lose the most weight by the start of May, the loser must pay for a very expensive meal out at a fancy restaurant!
I’ve got two daughters, so I enjoy spending as much time with them as I can. Away from spending time with my family, I play poker and hang out with my friends.
I probably spend a lot more time supporting production incidences and helping with solution designs than some would expect someone within a QA role to do. But this is just part of my role and I’m more than happy to go above and beyond as I’ve got ambitions to spread my skill set outside of the QA profession as well.
Just be yourself, don’t try and put on a persona. Authenticity builds stronger relationships and helps you grow in a way that feels natural. People appreciate honesty, and staying true to yourself will always take you further than trying to be someone you’re not.
Keep an eye on new technologies and try to expose yourself to as many different areas in QA as possible so you can see what interests you. Also, be as open to learning as possible. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and reach out to people if you don’t know something.
I work as a QA Manager on one of our long-standing customer accounts with IAG Loyalty. As part of this, I support the QA strategy and the delivery of all test activity across the Avios platform. I’m responsible for around ten different QAs which are split across various skill sets throughout our delivery teams, including functional QAs, Senior QAs, Lead QAs and our automation team with a focus on front and back-end test automation capabilities. As a team, we do a lot of work introducing and improving efficiencies across the QA process, innovating the current landscape of technologies that are trending and introducing as much autonomy in our release and deployment pipelines as possible. We incorporate our tests into those pipelines with the overall aim of reducing as much manual effort as possible. As part of this, my responsibility is to manage the test output across the delivery teams as well as guide, support and motivate the team, making sure that we’re adding value to the customer.
Alongside my role as a QA Manager, I’m also a Community Lead, looking after our QA community at Leighton. I help to build our community to provide a support network for our colleagues, not necessarily those just working within QA roles, but any colleague in any capacity across the business with an interest in QA. Over recent months we’ve seen a lot of increase in engagement, with some great examples of colleagues showcasing their skills through workshops and calls who are passionate about highlighting their capabilities across their customer projects, so it seems to be adding a lot of value internally.
I joined Leighton three years ago, having previously done a lot of contract-based work. Before starting at Leighton, I was generally happy continuing my work this way, but after having an initial conversation with the recruitment team, I found the role and the product I would potentially be starting on to be interesting. As part of the interview process, I had to deliver a presentation to the product team at IAG Loyalty, which was focused on an e-commerce product with multiple integrations, something that I have a lot of expertise in delivering. Getting to know some of the Leighton team throughout the recruitment process was also something that strongly impacted my decision to join. They immediately made me feel comfortable and gave me a real motivation to start working on the product I still find myself working on now. Three years down the line and I’m still here, doing what I love. I think that’s a real reflection on the business and our dedication to nurturing our talent, as before joining I was quite happy working in contractor-based roles, moving on every couple of years. The opportunity to be a Community Lead has also given me the platform to grow my own skill set, whilst pushing me slightly out of my comfort zone. Seeing the progress we’ve made has been really rewarding and this is something that I hope we can keep growing.
I’ve always been interested in tech and have always approached things in quite an analytical way. I studied computer science at university and did a lot of projects building applications and websites, which I enjoyed. When I graduated, I had the choice of either going down the developer route, or the QA route, but at the time I didn’t feel like the technical side of becoming a developer in terms of learning programming languages and understanding all the new technologies that were coming our were right for me. It was at that point I decided to pursue a career in QA. At the beginning I was involved in delivering test capabilities or running proof of concepts on automation tool sets, but found I really excelled in this when I joined Capgemini where I was in a technical consultancy role, delivering QA implementations and test capabilities across several different organisations that I worked with. Throughout the earlier years of my career, I grew to like the management side of things and as someone who’s quite hands-on I like to have a say in how we should be approaching the delivery of our QA practices across a product. I’m always open to group forum discussions as well as there may be an alternative way of looking at things.
Technical skills are, of course, crucial in this role, so making sure you’re constantly up to date with the latest trends and technologies is important so you’re never on the back-foot. I also think it is important to be personable and be passionate about what you do. You certainly don’t have to be the most outspoken, but I think it’s important that if you say you’re going to do something, you do it. I’ve often found that by being yourself makes it a lot easier to build better relationships across the workplace.
From a client perspective, we’re now delivering strategic capabilities across multiple product teams within the platform, with our team growing from around five QAs to ten. Supporting those teams and driving consistency has become one of the biggest challenges as we have several different consultancies working together, so trying to reduce any barriers of friction around politics in terms of how we’re all working together can be hard. Being in this role has helped me to understand the potential challenges of friction and the best ways to deal with it. From a technical perspective, we’ve become much more innovative in terms of delivering test capability and reducing manual test efforts. Understanding the product and the integrations have become crucial when supporting the team. I’m fortunate enough to work with some really talented individuals who have really allowed me to step back from the automation side of things, so I can focus on the strategic wider context. From a Leighton perspective, my role as a Community Lead has also evolved. I now work a lot closer with the rest of the Community Leads as well as the Executive Leadership Team, often working through different operational issues that we may face. As a growing business, I think it is important to set those foundations of solving challenges now and face those everyday issues together.
On my current project we’ve recently been able to implement a mocking capability for our Cyprus test environment. This approach removed third-party dependencies, significantly improving efficiency and saving valuable time. Collaborating with some of my Leighton colleagues to define the implementation strategy made this one a particularly rewarding experience.
I enjoy solving problems and helping people improve processes, particularly when there are pain points across multiple teams. I like to resolve things, and having the luxury of working alongside talented individuals means we can expose any issues and collaborate across the whole team, not just the QAs, to try and resolve them. If we need technical support from development teams, I want to make sure my team feels confident enough to ask for help if they need it. Whilst I understand the importance of increasing revenue in a business, I want to make sure I can help to add as much real value to the client as possible and really highlight the impactful work our QAs are doing.
I think our co-location days are a great idea. As an organisation with a lot of remote colleagues based across the country, having the opportunity to meet up at the different Cubo offices each month provides a chance for that face-to-face interaction. From a social aspect, Leighton really go above and beyond to make sure colleagues don’t feel isolated. Having never worked in an organisation that goes to those lengths before joining Leighton, it’s something really refreshing to be a part of.
When I stood up and delivered a talk at our company day last year, speaking about the test automation capability we are delivering for IAG Loyalty. This was nerve wracking as it’s completely different to when you’re speaking remotely through a screen, but it’s something I’m glad I did. I’ve found that the more public speaking I do, the more confident I get as a person, and it makes you realise that people do have a shared interest in what you’re speaking about.
I’m happy with where I’m at currently in terms of my role as a QA Manager. That being said, I do want to explore the option of becoming a Solutions Architect at some point in the future. There are several steps I feel I’d need to take in order to achieve this, like completing my AWS certifications and looking to get some sort of experience within Leighton. I’m already applying some aspects of a Solutions Architect role on my client project; however, I do feel like there’s still room for improvement in terms of my technical knowledge, but that’s up to me to grow and develop those relevant skills.
I’m currently on a bit of a fitness and health transformation. I’ve got a competition with my brother-in-law to see who can lose the most weight by the start of May, the loser must pay for a very expensive meal out at a fancy restaurant!
I’ve got two daughters, so I enjoy spending as much time with them as I can. Away from spending time with my family, I play poker and hang out with my friends.
I probably spend a lot more time supporting production incidences and helping with solution designs than some would expect someone within a QA role to do. But this is just part of my role and I’m more than happy to go above and beyond as I’ve got ambitions to spread my skill set outside of the QA profession as well.
Just be yourself, don’t try and put on a persona. Authenticity builds stronger relationships and helps you grow in a way that feels natural. People appreciate honesty, and staying true to yourself will always take you further than trying to be someone you’re not.
Keep an eye on new technologies and try to expose yourself to as many different areas in QA as possible so you can see what interests you. Also, be as open to learning as possible. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and reach out to people if you don’t know something.
