From Japanese Language Specialist to QA engineer: How I Found My Calling in Testing
Introduction
Hello, friends! As I reflect on my journey from Japanese language specialist to becoming a QA engineer, I sometimes regret not organizing and documenting all the knowledge and experience I gained along the way. Each step was important and opened new horizons, but much of it got lost in the day-to-day work and is now forgotten.
However, what wasn’t done then, I’ll make sure to do now.
A Turning Point
One of the turning points in my life was a visit to New York in 2015. I remember standing in a bookstore just before the New Year, flipping through a book on Natural Language Processing with Python. At that moment, I realized that the world of programming was a universe I wanted to explore, and it sparked the idea to combine IT with my background in languages. This realization inspired me to transition into IT.
Educational Background and Early Career
Since then, I have actively learned and developed in the IT field:
- I completed a 6-month software engineering course at ITMO University in St. Petersburg, where I studied C#, SQL, and OOP.
- I also taught myself CSS and HTML and tried to create web pages, which helped me better understand web development process.
First Job Experience
My first actual job was in an SEO company, where I worked for almost six months, helping configure websites to meet SEO standards. This role required an understanding of code and, at times, even writing it. Although it wasn’t the exact IT role I was hoping for, it gave me a solid foundation and practical coding experience.
Transition to QA
I soon decided to pursue a role in a more IT-centric company, specifically one that focused on software development. That’s when I stumbled upon a book on software testing, which I read with great enthusiasm. This book opened my eyes to the field of quality assurance, and shortly after, I found my first job as a tester, leveraging my education and prior experience in IT-related work.
QA Career Milestone
In 2016, I began my QA career at a company that developed a business intelligence platform for Big Data analytics. The platform uses Data Mining technologies and multi-linguistic analysis (hello to my idea of combining IT and languages) to:
- Collect and upload data from various sources (social media, websites, file stores, databases),
- Distribute data searches in archives,
- Extract named entities (people, organizations, events, locations, financial data),
- Generate graphs, maps with geolocation, and statistical reports.
As someone with a humanitarian background, I loved our project and enjoyed testing it. I worked for the company for over six years and would might have stayed longer if we hadn’t moved out of Russia.
Continuing Education
During my time there, I completed several courses to further my development in IT:
- Test Analysts Course: Very deep and insightful, especially in the context of testing. Techniques in test design proved to be valuable in my day-to-day work.
- Test Management Course: Strengthened my team leadership and organizational skills. This course gave me confidence in managing processes and structuring work.
Returning to the Profession
It’s been 2 years of a break in my profession after we moved to a new country, and now it’s a challenge to get back into the profession. But it’s also been an exciting learning experience, and I’m ready to refresh and expand my expertise.
Through this blog, I’ll be sharing my learning experiences, course reviews, insights into real testing tasks, and tips on preparing for interviews and collaborating with teams.
See you soon in the blog! 🚀
