What did you do before Diffblue?
I began working at Diffblue 6 months ago. Before this I spent 14 years working in the US, Japan, and UK for one of the largest service companies in the oil and gas industry, after completing a master’s degree in civil engineering in Japan.
My route into software testing was fairly unusual as I have not formally trained in computer science. I spent the first few years of my career using software to analyse geoscientific data and moved into a software support role.for a short period of time Eventually, I was offered a testing role for the commercial software I supported, and then spent almost 9 years testing software.
Although I enjoyed my work, I made the decision to change careers when oil prices declined in 2016. I enrolled in a master’s conversion course in computing in order to pursue a career in software testing. When I read about Diffblue in 2017, I thought it would be a fundamental and revolutionary product. At the same time, as a QA, I really wanted to test Diffblue’s software.
Could you tell us a bit about your role at Diffblue?
I work for Diffblue as a QA Engineer. When I explain my job to someone who doesn’t know software development, I say that I’m testing software that tests software. More precisely, I am testing software that writes unit tests. My job is quite unique – typically, QA Engineers do not have to know about programming. However, since the software is for developers, we need to write programs to test the software. Essentially, we are required to act/test as a `developer` who want unit tests to be automatically written.
As a QA, our job is to identify bugs, and provide simple examples to save developers time to investigate root causes, so that their time can be spent on feature development. In general, the earlier we identify bugs the better.
What makes Diffblue unique?
Diffblue is a remarkably international firm, and that is perhaps one of the most unique things about working here. At last count, we have 20-something nationalities represented. It makes for a fun and diverse group and everyone is extremely friendly and eager to help.
