👋 Introductions Thread – Q1 2025

Better late than never. :sweat_smile:

Hello, I’m Simon Tomes, Community Lead at Ministry of Testing.

Thanks for stopping by and reading this thread. :smiley:

We start a new introductions thread for folks to introduce or reintroduce themselves to the community every quarter.

  • What brings you to The Club and Ministry of Testing community?
  • What are you excited about right now?
  • What do you want to learn?
  • Where are you based?
  • What else could you share about yourself?

You don’t have to answer all these questions. Reply in a way that works for you. Use text, video, drawings, AI-generated images, memes or whatever.

We appreciate some folks stepping away for a while and returning. It’ll be great to hear from you again. :slightly_smiling_face:

P.S. share a link to your MoT profile page! Here’s mine.

  1. Visit My MoT
  2. Ensure “Make Private” is switched off
  3. Select your name
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Hi! I’m Judy Mosley. I’m a QA Engineer at TextUs. I live right outside of Louisville KY where I enjoy the food, the outdoors, reading, and listening to podcasts. I also drink far too much coffee.

I’ve been a fan of MOT for years but only recently started contributing to the community. I’m learning so much and I’m happy to share what I learn to help it all come full circle.

I’m very much a “boots on the ground” QA. So, I know what I know but I don’t always know if what I know is correct :sweat_smile: or a good practice. So thankful to be honest about my current skillset so others can (kindly) point out a better direction.

Here’s my MOT profile: Judy Mosley | jmosley5 | Ministry of Testing
Happy to connect on LinkedIn: ☕ Judy Mosley - TextUs | LinkedIn
And, delighted to discuss anything related to food or any weird fun fact you’ve learned about life lately.

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Hi Everyone,

I am Ujjwal Kumar Singh, working as an SDET at a FinTech company in Gurgaon, India. I joined the Ministry of Testing last year out of curiosity, aiming to expand my network and connect with like-minded testers. Over the past year, I had the opportunity to meet some amazing people through this community and gain valuable insights on various topics.

Currently, I’m exploring AI in testing and hence I’m excited about the same. I have also recently started contributing to open-source projects and plan to be more involved this year.

Here is my MoT profile: MoT Profile Link

I am always open to engaging in discussions, feel free to connect.

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Alright peeps! I’m Gary Hawkes, QA Lead at Ito World (remote), I’m based in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England. I’ve been dipping in and out of MOT over the years, but I’m back because I’m at a point in my career I need more professionally than just my job.
To summarise my career, its been a game of pinball: started in accounts, bounced into IT Support, bounced into software development (when Visual Basic was cool), bounced into dev management, bounced into QA management, bounced into test automation, bounced back into QA management, bounced into automated testing, bounced back into management…then I thought I better stay there as that seems to be where I get the most joy.
That joy comes from working to understand people, helping them make better, more valuable versions of themselves - personally and professionally. The broad spectrum of my random unplanned career means I can give guidance on most things, which is 99% how to approach problems - not necessarily that I have the solution.

Other than that, I’m a trombone playing, singing, darts playing, codeword loving, book reading kind of weirdo that loves to smile and see others smile. You can talk to me about anything. :grin:

My profile is thus and linkedin

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Hi everyone,
My name is Fieke de Vreede, I’m a test engineer from The Netherlands. I’m currently working for DUO (Dutch governmental organisation, part of the Ministry of Education), which is based in Groningen.

When I took my first steps in testing some three years ago, I quickly came across MoT and I would like to contribute more to the MoTaverse this coming year. I really like the community vibe of MoT and all the wonderful resources it provides to learn and to connect with other testers. Would also really love to attend TestBash this year, trying my best to convince management I cannot miss it :slight_smile: I have also sent in a talk proposal, so… who knows? Fingers crossed!

Right now I am learning a lot about frontend testing, whereas I started out with backend testing. I have recently switched to another DevOps team in my organisation, so I am learning tonnes of other new things too. Which I love!

Before I was a test engineer, I used to work as a teacher of English at a secondary school. So if you’re interested in knowing what it’s like working with a bunch of teenagers in a classroom in NL, let me know :upside_down_face:

Feel free to visit my LinkedIN or my MoT profile

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Hi all!

I’m Eamon Droko and I’m a QA Engineer based in London,UK.

This is only my second post on The Club and what brings me here is a desire to engage and connect with the Testing community, both in-person and online.

I recently attended the MoT London meetup and it was so great to speak with so many interesting people from different walks of life but all connected by QA and Testing. I left feeling so inspired and energised - I’m even in the process of writing an article that will hopefully be on the MoT site (Thanks to Simon for the encouragement!)

I’m currently looking for a new QA role so thinking about things to learn has been a bit of a challenge lately. So many companies want different things but a post I made on LinkedIn recently got so many great responses from the community on where to focus my learning.

Outside QA things, I’d describe myself as very active. I love going to the gym, bouldering and long walks. I’m a huge gamer with Street Fighter 6 being my go-to these days. I’m also a huge fan of anime and manga with over 200 manga volumes on my bookshelf at home.

Here’s a link to my MOT profile and my LinkedIn

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Hola, me llama KimBley, @yelbmik1 , and my title is Senior Quality Assurance Analyst for Brandt Information Services in FL, USA ( (28) Brandt Information Services: Overview | LinkedIn).

  • I was first introduced to MoT by a testing colleague 10 years ago, and I’ve been actively enjoying affiliation and membership ever since.
  • Right now, I’m excited about going into month three of my new job with Brandt. (So far, they’ve been a great group to learn from and work with.) I’m also excited about continuing to grow my testing career by learning a new industry, Python, and taking a deeper dive into Azure DevOps.
  • I want to continue learning automation.
  • I am home-based in Michigan (USA), and remotely working – which I absolutely love and prefer over commuting to an office building.
  • I meditate and love getting cuddles from my two rescue “kittens”, Blue and Ray.
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Hi!!

My name is Sydney. I discovered a love for testing about a year ago but started diving deeper into the field about six months ago! I’m based in Greenville, SC.

@cassandrahl introduced me to MoT and has been an amazing guide, showing me the ropes. Since joining, I’ve been engaging with the community, reading, and even participated in @christinepinto’s MVP walkthrough. I’m excited to be among others who share similar goals and interests!

Right now, what excites me most is the day-to-day journey of learning about testing and exploring the many aspects of the field. I enjoy exploratory testing, usability testing, and finding flaws in systems to help create better outcomes. I’m eager to join a team as a Junior Tester soon and put my skills to the test!

Fun facts about me: I’m vegan, a former teen librarian, and I traveled to Jerusalem in 2023!

MoT profile: MoT
LinkedIn profile: LinkedIn profile

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Hi Everyone!
I’m Hanan Ur Rehman from Germany.
I’ve been working in the industry since 6 years with various business domains like tech startups, real estate, enterprise resource planning, SaaS products and the current CMMS product.

Exploratory, test sessions, RST, automation, API, performance I’ve done it all and will talk about it too.

I joined MoT due to my self improvement trait as I wanted to see what and how others in my field are doing. My texts are generally concise as I myself like to remain context driven :sweat_smile:

I try to follow formula 1, make good coffee, cook food and yap about uncommon topics.

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:wave: I’m Maaret Pyhäjärvi, a testing specialist and Director (testing services) at CGI in Finland :finland:. I usually call myself exploratory testing extraordinaire, polyglot programmer, speaker, conference designer and community facilitator.

I wrote articles for MoT some years ago, and more recently I have been writing in my own blog at https://visible-quality.blogspot.fi/ and on LinkedIn (highlights, connections with people), Mastodon (public notes) and Bluesky (highlights). I’m trying to make sense where are my people at, and this is a good option that they may be here.

I am learning and teaching a style of testing I call contemporary exploratory testing. I have not liked the idea of testers as information providers, the energy we use on warning on test automation, and the results of testing coming from being accidental rather than intentional, and continue on a journey to figure out how this could be done better on scale.

I am a serial volunteer, with speaking at conferences, with project leadership committee of Selenium open source project, with TechVoices and many others.

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Hi everyone

I’m Aaron Flynn, based in the south west of the UK. I’ve been a MoT lurker for the past year or so, after a new job and some life changes.

But I’ve been pretty active before that. Including some articles and sessions. Some of which won’t be linked to my MoT profile but can be found in my work links.

I’m keen to get back involved with the community, and see what interesting conversations and ideas we come up with.

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I’m Kylee Tilley, software engineer, tester, speaker, consultant. I’ve been writing code for 30 years. It all started with personal homepages in the mid 90’s. I’ve been writing software professionally for 10+ years. I broke in to the industry as a tester for a startup before becoming a software delivery consultant. I’m based in the midwest United States.

My experience is broad but deep and across both development and testing. I use that experience to positively impact my teams’ product delivery, teach developers to think about testing, asking inconvenient those questions about the technical side of a solution, or getting everyone to think about risk identification and mitigation. I get out in to the community to talk about these topics and break down the barrier between developers and testers.

I also do a lot of development on the side! I’ve implemented several test runner frameworks from the ground up, partially implemented a webdriver client, libraries for mocking and asserting, implemented a programming language and tooling around it (VS Code). I also love game development and things like implementing vehicle physics.

Oh and I’m really into synthesizers! :sweat_smile:

I’m generally a very introverted person until spoken to. Then you can’t get me to shut up.

I was introduced to MoT through Twitter. I then attended TestBash SF (super fun). I then spoke (via recorded video) at TestBash which was a dream come true.

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Hello everyone, I’m Paul Gilson and I’ve been in and around testing since 2005. I’m currently Head of Training Operations at an academy helping people get into tech, and part of my role includes teaching testing and quality engineering.

I’m a long time MoT member, but infrequent visitor who wishes there was more time to post and attend! I’ve been to quite a few MoT events over the years, and am always grateful for the MoT job board - it’s where I found my current role.

I’m here at MoT right now as I’m regularly working with our graduates who are looking for their first jobs in the testing industry - there are lots of brilliant resources here, and I’m always looking for ways to get them engaged with the testing community, too.

Testing is something I absolutely love doing, and it’s been so nice to be able to work with others and see them begin to engage with it as well. I still look to bring in testing to other parts of my role where I can - I still find ways to add value to in-house systems, processes and products! - but I do feel like I could be closer to what’s going on in testing, what’s changing, new trends and so on, and MoT is one way I’m doing that.

Outside of testing, I like hiking and climbing, dancing, inventing recipes, challenges and puzzles like Advent of Code, finding obscure music that makes me happy, and good coffee with a pain au chocolat (which are both sat next to me as I write).

My profile, with links to LinkedIn and my (very out of date!) testing blog.

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Hi I’m Clare, I’m a senior SDET at Team RH Fitness. I’m based in Leicestershire in UK. I’ve been an MOT lurker for a while now, but thought it was time for me to be a little more active and to build my network. I recently attended my first Meetup at Coventry where I met some great people who made me feel very welcome.

I’ve been in tech for almost 19 years, mainly specialising in manual/exploratory testing. In 2021 I joined Dunelm as a Quality Engineer and began pairing with engineers. This was the first time I’d been exposed to code. Whilst working with the SDET he led me to a Udemy course to learn JavaScript. For the next 18 months I spent my days pairing with engineers and my evenings, after putting my kids to bed, with my head in code. Soon I was writing API integration tests with jest and frontend UI tests with playwright.
I continued my studying and completed a Postman Automated API course, Unit Testing and began a course on Node Js learning how to create API’s.

By 2023 I was promoted to SDET and continued to gain valuable front end and back end automation experience.
In 2024 I successfully completed a 6 week secondment into software engineering to see whether this was an area I’d like to move into.
By end of 2024, I decided to take the plunge into mobile automation and joined Team RH Fitness as a senior SDET. For the past 5 months I have successfully written end to end tests utilising maestro dev and now I’ve moved into the world of jetpack compose and have begun to implement UI tests for Android.

I’m passionate about testing and in 2023 I spoke at my daughter’s school to a room of 90 8-9 year olds about my job, what I do and why I love doing it.

I enjoy mentoring other QE’s and I love to inspire others.

Outside of work, I am a mother to two girls aged 7 and 10.
I enjoy strength training and currently starting to train for competitions.
I also enjoy singing and used to be a karaoke compere on the north east club circuit.

Here’s a link to my LinkedIn page: LinkedIn

Here’s my MoT profile: Mot profile link

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Hi everyone, I’m Ana! I’m a brazilian lawyer that lives in Portugal about 7 years and I’m far from my career since I left my country…I tried to start again here in Portugal, but I’m done about all the bullshit of my area here :sweat_smile: so I’m here to start a new path, changing my career by learning about QA tester and trying to be happy on this whole new way! Please, be kind, I’m a beginner and I never had a touch with this area so…thanks for the welcoming! And here I goooo…

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Welcome Ana!! Don’t you worry, you are in a very safe space. Best of luck to you on your new journey :pray:

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Hi everyone,

My name is Richard and I currently work as an IT support technician for a company in Worcestershire (UK). I have recently finished a Level 3 apprenticeship after many years in an unrelated field, and wish to progress my career towards testing.

I have a coupe of friends in this field of work and feel it is a good fit for both my skills and personality. I hope to speak to some of you on here as I start my journey.

Regards,
Richard.

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Hello! :waving_hand:

I’m Elisse, an architect (like, in building construction) from the Philippines. I just joined MoT. I learned about this cool community from my QA job hunt and from an instructor in ISTQB-CTFL.

I primarily joined because I am looking for inspirations as I continue my journey, it is a tough market out here. Seeing other career-switchers (like @ana_isola - I’m a stranger but hello!) can be a good thing knowing I’m not alone in this kind of transition.

Hoping one day I get to support this kind of community too! :sparkles:

LinkedIn

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Hi, my name is Claudia. I’m Brazilian, and I’m starting out in QA testing. I have a background in architecture, I’m very detail-oriented, and I have an opinion about EVERYTHING. Ahahahaha, I love studying, and I believe that this new path will involve a lot of studying and lots of exchanges between colleagues. Besides work, I love animals, movies, books, and traveling. I loved meeting Mot, and I hope to learn a lot from you. Nice to meet you :face_blowing_a_kiss:

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love that we are both branching from an architecture field :sparkling_heart: hiiiii

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