Career Spotlight: Mid Level QA Engineer
Enda Brody joined Distilled SCH in 2018 as a Junior Quality Engineer, and has since been promoted to a Mid-Level QA Engineer. We chatted to Enda about life, career, and the advice he would give people starting out on the same career path as him.
Tell us about your career before Distilled!
I was one of the few graduates that had a dedicated module to software quality. I would later find out that this would be very rare, but from it I knew I wanted to pursue a job in software quality. This proved difficult and took many interviews and many declines. While I was doing this, I got a job making Pizza and after that landscaping. I finally got my first opportunity in Galway at Blue Tree Systems as a contract manual testing in the summer 2017. I learned a lot and got to experience the pros and cons of a small company. Close to the end of my contract, I was offered a QA role in the Galway branch of SAP. I spent a year there and got to work with people from around the World and worked cross-functionally with other teams such as Dev Ops, Customer Support and Business Analytics.
Why did you choose Distilled at the time you joined?
This sounds soppy but for love! My Girlfriend and I had a chance to live together in Dublin and my contract with SAP was ending. I wanted to work on software that I myself use or people I know use, and the fact it was also an Irish brand was an added bonus to joining Distilled SCH. From the interview I knew that the Distilled culture was exactly what I was looking for. I have been very lucky to work in a small, start-up like company and a well established large company, but I figured out that in a small company, you get to work on projects that you would want to use, and you can see clearly how it will benefit the end user. Getting that kind of real-time feedback from your users as a tester is knowledge that you can not buy.
What was your first role in Distilled? How have you progressed since first joining the company?
I started as a Junior Quality Engineer and then progressed to Mid Level. I had limited automation experience before joining Distilled but this has ramped up dramatically. I have now got to the level where I am working at Full Stack, getting to look at the Frontend and Backend code, work on the Jenkins Pipeline and the Database. This is a really unique opportunity for a tester as you can work and learn from other parts of the business which is not limited to just technical teams, but product and business leads have taught me a lot about the industry of property and marketplace.
What would be your advice to graduates just starting out their career in this field?
Embed yourself in the field — this can be done very casually through things like books, videos and podcasts. I have being listing to The QA Lead with Jonathon Wright and it’s a podcast I would recommend. By doing this, you will find out if that field is for you, if the culture is something you want to be apart of, and it will show employers that you have a genuine passion in what you do.
Join meet ups and talks — Covid has moved a lot of these online which I have found has increased attendance. I am sure this will keep going after Covid, making them much more accessible to attend.
Look after your health, physical and mental! — Most of my life I knew I wanted to have a job working with technology, in doing so I developed the most common bad lifestyle habits. Bad sleep patterns, eating late, not eating the right food, and doing no physical activity. All the things they don’t tell you that are a byproduct of a job where you have to sit and stare at a screen for an unnatural amount of hours only to go home and stare at more screens! Any positive habits you can introduce now in your life will benefit you for the rest of your life and career. For me it’s running and strength training and getting the right amount of sleep. For you it can be meditating, yoga, hour long walks, an eating plan or whatever you like to try. I found the key is to start with a dedicated plan and stick with it for a month then review.
You don’t have to choose between a successful career and your health, companies are understanding that now more than ever, and Distilled are very much are on top of the game when it comes to work-life balance.
Build your own projects and have a digital portfolio. This does not have to be a fully fledged website or a released app (although they are the most impressive and achievable), but even writing a blog on tech you reviewed, tools that you like or anything that can show an employer you have passion for what you do. These don’t have to have highly polished ground breaking things, but more like a visual story on how you had an idea and took the time to learn and implement the idea. As a graduate you don’t have the fallback of experience and company projects you have worked on, but this will be a good substitute and the more collaborative projects you work on the better.
What is the best piece of advice that you’ve received that has helped you get to where you are today?
Stay humble, disciplined and keep moving forward!
Stay humble: The more honest I was about things I didn’t know, but was willing to try and learn, the more respect and trust I gathered with people. I am always striving to be efficient or be in the know about something, but in tech things move so fast that you are always a student trying to be a master! This is why it’s important to stay humble and keep learning, don’t be afraid to seek out help.
Disciplined: Nothing changes without it, I see discipline as two parts:
(I) Show up - whether that’s going to the gym or sitting down to watch that coding tutorial — it all begins with you stepping out of what’s comfortable and moving into the unknown.
(II) Begin — whatever you commit to, one hour or one chapter, just begin doing it, but just it’s just as important to STOP. The best way to wipe out a project is to try to finish it in one go; that’s fine for things you know how to do well, but you don’t need discipline for things we do well.
Keep moving forward: It’s the only thing we can do! I have found that if I can be reflective and see that I have moved forward on anything big or small, personal or professional, that’s how I gauge the steps I have to take or keep taking to continually move forward.
