A day in the life of a test engineer

by Maikel Geirnaert, Test Engineer

About the author Hi, my name is Maikel Geirnaert. I have 10 years of experience in testing and have gained a significant amount of insight into test automation during that time. I think I found my perfect job in test automation, because of my love of solving puzzles. Let me explain. To create an automated test case or to solve a puzzle you must take a logical approach to get to the possible solution. Then you start working on that solution step-by-step and if something goes wrong, just go back a step. There will always be some degree of trial and error involved so you shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes because you'll always learn from them. Eventually you'll solve the puzzle - or in my case, implement the test case.

I've been lucky enough to work on various projects, including assignments for a leading communications company in Europe, the Belgian Post Office, a smart lighting company, and a supplier to the semi-conductor industry. I'm currently working for a large client in the home automation sector as a test engineer. I joined their team three years ago.

Our team is responsible for creating and maintaining automated test cases in various test automation frameworks (Python and C#). We're also responsible for reporting the status of these test cases so that the client is automatically and immediately informed of potential issues in new builds (CI/CD). My main responsibility is developing test cases for web and mobile apps in the C# framework.

MORNING After a good cup of coffee to start my day, I join the daily standup where the team share the latest status of the topics they're working on. Issues that might be potential blockers or unclear user stories are briefly discussed, to find a quick solution so that everyone can continue with their work. If we can't find an immediate solution, we organise a deep dive session on the topic after the standup.

LUNCH At lunch, I usually take a walk with one or more colleagues who are working on other technical projects at different customers. This gives us a chance to discuss what we're working on and the QA challenges we might be facing. It's nice to share thoughts with them whilst stretching our legs. Obviously, we also talk about non-work related topics. This way we have a meaningful, pleasant and healthy mid-day break.

AFTERNOON In the afternoon I either continue working on the development of a test case or I start designing a new test case.

For the design of difficult to automate test cases, I like to work out the test flow step-by-step on paper. Some might consider that old school, but I prefer physically writing things down to help my thought process. It's also very useful as a reminder to refer to during the development of those test cases.

Every three weeks we have a team meeting to showcase certain topics for each other such as: advanced test cases, potential new tools or plugins for our test automation frameworks, dashboards to report the status of test cases, etc. It's a perfect way to share knowledge, best practice and track our progress with other teams.

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