Difference between revisions of "Curriculum Vitae - Vincent Dirks"
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| − | + | == Vincent Dirks - Software Quality Engineer == | |
| + | I am a generalist Software Quality Engineer, always keen to learn the product, team, technology, and organisational contexts, to adapt myself to them, and then use my skills and knowledge to perform the role required from me. I am able to test solutions and processes directly, and also love to help engineer the whole interconnected ecosystem necessary to efficiently determine and monitor the quality of a software solution. Automating the product itself, as well as preparing the product to be ready for testing, version control and branching strategy, CI/CD pipelines, creating test environments and infrastructure, preparing test data, capture and aggregation of (test) environment logging and monitoring data, and many more, all of these tasks lend themselves to degrees of automation. | ||
| − | + | I really like testing things, as well as developing tools that help us do it efficiently. | |
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| − | + | ==Skills== | |
| − | + | ===Testing=== | |
| − | + | '''A'''PI Testing, '''C'''ontext Driven Testing, '''R'''isk Based Testing, '''T'''ool Assisted '''E'''xploratory '''T'''esting, '''T'''est Planning, '''V'''isual Modelling, '''S'''ession and '''T'''hread Based Testing, '''G'''herkin, '''B'''ehaviour Driven Development, '''M'''etrics Driven Development, '''A'''B Testing, '''M'''obile Testing, '''M'''entoring & Induction, '''U'''AT, '''F'''irmware Testing. | |
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| − | + | ===Automation=== | |
| + | [[Curriculum_Vitae_-_Vincent_Dirks#Senior_Automation_Test_Engineer_-_Westpac_.28Apr-2021_-_Nov-2023.29|''Westpac(2.5yr)'']]: '''R'''EST Assured ... XXX TBD <br/>[[Curriculum_Vitae_-_Vincent_Dirks#Test_Engineer_-_Fiserv_.28Jan_2017_-_Apr-2020.29|''Fiserv (3.3yr)'']]: '''P'''ostman & '''N'''ewman, '''J'''avaScript('''N'''ode.js, '''E'''xpress.js, '''P'''ug), '''T'''FS, '''P'''owershell, '''S'''pecFlow & '''C'''#, '''S'''oapUI, '''S'''QL.<br/>[[Curriculum_Vitae_-_Vincent_Dirks#Senior_Software_Test_Analyst_.E2.80.93_Trade_Me_.28Dec_2014_-_Aug_2016.29|''Trade Me (2yr)'']]: '''S'''oapUI/'''G'''roovy scripting, '''S'''QL, '''P'''rotractor, '''X'''PATH & CSS locators. <br/>[[Curriculum_Vitae_-_Vincent_Dirks#Software_Tester_.E2.80.93_LeasePlan_NZ_.28Apr_2013_-_Dec_2014.29|''LeasePlan (2yr)'']]: '''V'''BA/'''A'''ccess, '''S'''QL. | ||
| − | + | ===Programming=== | |
| + | '''J'''avascript ('''N'''ode.js, '''E'''xpress.js, '''P'''ug, '''C'''ypress.io, '''W'''ebdriver.io), '''J'''ava (Selenium, GWT, Robotics, JUnit), '''S'''QL, '''C'''#, '''P'''owershell, '''C''', '''C'''++ | ||
| − | == | + | ===Other=== |
| − | + | '''S'''plunk, '''S'''quad master, '''C'''I/CD, '''D'''eploy lead, '''P'''roduct demo's, '''T'''raining, '''M'''anufacturing Resource Planning, '''L'''ogistics, '''E'''xternal Relationships, Radars, Lasers, Fibre-optics, Physics, Robotics, Statistics | |
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| − | + | == Related wiki pages == | |
| − | + | === [[References_-_Full_List|References]] === | |
| − | + | === [[Volunteering]] === | |
| − | + | === [[Professional Development]] === | |
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| − | == | + | === [[Education]] === |
| − | + | === [[Presentations, Posts, and blogs]] === | |
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| − | + | ==What I'm reading, watching, listening, learning, and trying out in 2024== | |
| − | : | + | ===Interesting Reads=== |
| − | : | + | * [https://www.satisfice.com/download/a-context-driven-approach-to-automation-in-testing A Context Driven Approach to Automation in Testing] By James Bach and Michael Bolton |
| − | + | * [https://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/4947 Round Earth Test Strategy] by James Bach | |
| + | :Interesting alternative to the "test automation pyramid". There are testing problems to consider at every level, ''Quality above requires quality below''. | ||
| − | + | ===My '''[[Observability Project]]'''=== | |
| − | :*I | + | * [https://expressjs.com/en/starter/hello-world.html Express.js basic hello world] and my [https://github.com/VincentDirks/node.js-in-the-cloud node.js-in-the-cloud] repo |
| + | * [https://www.atlassian.com/microservices/microservices-architecture/kubernetes-vs-docker Kubernetes vs. Docker] by Josh Campbell at Atlassian <br> | ||
| + | :I want to learn the difference between these technologies to see how it might apply to my [[Observability Project]] | ||
| − | + | * Setting up Docker Desktop at home to run the [https://github.com/Splunk/docker-Splunk Docker Splunk Image] | |
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| − | + | <br> | |
| − | + | '''[[Archive What I'm Reading, Watching, Listing, Learning, and Trying Out|Archive of pre-2024 entries]]''' | |
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| − | : | + | == <end> == |
| − | : | + | Send [http://dirksonline.net/cvwiki/index.php?title=Talk:Curriculum_Vitae_-_Vincent_Dirks <u>feedback</u>] |
Latest revision as of 04:52, 1 May 2024
| Name | Vincent Dirks |
|---|---|
| vincent@dirksonline.net | |
| Address | Beautiful Parau Auckland |
| Mob | 021-0269-6216 |
| nz.linkedin.com |
Contents
- 1 Vincent Dirks - Software Quality Engineer
- 2 Skills
- 3 Work Experience
- 3.1 Senior Automation Quality Engineer - Westpac (Apr-2021 - Nov-2023)
- 3.2 Fun stuff (May-2020 - Sep-2020)
- 3.3 Test Engineer - Fiserv (Jan 2017 - Apr-2020)
- 3.4 Contracting - Engel Consulting (Sep 2016 - Dec 2016)
- 3.5 Senior Software Test Analyst – Trade Me (Dec 2014 - Aug 2016)
- 3.6 Software Tester – LeasePlan NZ (Apr 2013 - Dec 2014)
- 3.7 Prior to 2013
- 4 Related wiki pages
- 5 What I'm reading, watching, listening, learning, and trying out in 2024
- 6 <end>
Vincent Dirks - Software Quality Engineer
I am a generalist Software Quality Engineer, always keen to learn the product, team, technology, and organisational contexts, to adapt myself to them, and then use my skills and knowledge to perform the role required from me. I am able to test solutions and processes directly, and also love to help engineer the whole interconnected ecosystem necessary to efficiently determine and monitor the quality of a software solution. Automating the product itself, as well as preparing the product to be ready for testing, version control and branching strategy, CI/CD pipelines, creating test environments and infrastructure, preparing test data, capture and aggregation of (test) environment logging and monitoring data, and many more, all of these tasks lend themselves to degrees of automation.
I really like testing things, as well as developing tools that help us do it efficiently.
Skills
Testing
API Testing, Context Driven Testing, Risk Based Testing, Tool Assisted Exploratory Testing, Test Planning, Visual Modelling, Session and Thread Based Testing, Gherkin, Behaviour Driven Development, Metrics Driven Development, AB Testing, Mobile Testing, Mentoring & Induction, UAT, Firmware Testing.
Automation
Westpac(2.5yr): REST Assured ... XXX TBD
Fiserv (3.3yr): Postman & Newman, JavaScript(Node.js, Express.js, Pug), TFS, Powershell, SpecFlow & C#, SoapUI, SQL.
Trade Me (2yr): SoapUI/Groovy scripting, SQL, Protractor, XPATH & CSS locators.
LeasePlan (2yr): VBA/Access, SQL.
Programming
Javascript (Node.js, Express.js, Pug, Cypress.io, Webdriver.io), Java (Selenium, GWT, Robotics, JUnit), SQL, C#, Powershell, C, C++
Other
Splunk, Squad master, CI/CD, Deploy lead, Product demo's, Training, Manufacturing Resource Planning, Logistics, External Relationships, Radars, Lasers, Fibre-optics, Physics, Robotics, Statistics
Work Experience
Senior Automation Quality Engineer - Westpac (Apr-2021 - Nov-2023)
| References |
| TBD xxx |
- At Westpac I worked as a roving Quality Engineer across a number of teams. Learning new product domains, and technology stacks for both the product as well as the automation. It was fun and exciting, keeping me on my toes to quickly adapt and pickup new knowledge and skills. The common thread was always testing through learning and discovering the product and project. Identifying the biggest issues directly in front of us, as well as looking to the future for pitfalls to avoid.
- MF8TL Team
- MF8, aka Mobile First V8, was a legacy API product, and was part of a mobile and web app development eco system sold by IBM. MF8 needed to be replaced with a new temporary solution, MF8TL, prior to migrating all functionality to micro-services. MF8 & MF8TL were effectively API (middleware) services facilitating access to the wider banking network. MF8TL needed to be stood up quickly, and behave identically to the legacy MF8 system.
- My involvement with the team was to identify existing testing tools and processes used for the old MF8 system, and to apply them to the new MF8TL implementation.
- Primarily I worked to adapt an existing REST Assured, testng, Java automation suite. I created new scenarios following the patterns already used in the suite, using service classes, POJOs, extending base test classes etc. I also significantly refactored parts to standardise and improve the information logged to Splunk when failures were detected, using method overloading to remove duplicated code, centralising the code that despatches requests & receives the responses, creating a single place to verify the kind of response received, prior to transforming to the success response POJO's.
- Test Environments Team
- The main task this team worked on was to build a fun little webapp UI and API server using Node.js, Express.js, React, and the mermaid.js diagramming tool to create node maps of how various systems connected. In this project I was more a JavaScript developer than a tester.
- Observability Squad
- With this team I switched to a more Platform Engineering role, and became the Westpac Splunk Champion. We were supporting and growing the Splunk platform for Westpac internal technology teams. I have had exposure to Splunk in previous companies and have truly loved it for analysing data. I really like to try and find the customers' experiences come through the data. I would always ask the teams we were supporting on their Splunk onboarding journey three things:
- Are you logging how well your product/service/feature is working? eg transactions per hour
- Are you catching all the errors and warnings to know when the product/service/feature is doing something bad
- When you observe an error/warning are you recording good quality information that truly helps devOps understand the issue, and expedites the remediation of the issue?
- The latter I find particularly important because in the end the objective is to minimise the risk of major issues by knowing about them quickly, and also being able to solve them quickly. Timely & good quality information is paramount.
- D365 KiwiSaver Squad
- Built a Selenium WebDriver POM based cucumber Java automation suite from scratch to test a D365 webapp.
- Mobile Squad
- Manual and automated testing of Westpac's iOS & Android mobile apps.
Template:Weather Radar NZ limited
Fun stuff (May-2020 - Sep-2020)
- Ministry of Testing - Auckland Branch lead coordinator
- personal QR Code for NZ Covid Tracing App
Test Engineer - Fiserv (Jan 2017 - Apr-2020)
| References |
| 2020 Fiserv - Piyush Dungrani - LinkedIn recommendation |
| 2020 Fiserv - K Vaughan Kaufman - KvK Consultancy |
- Fiserv Auckland produces mobile apps for 2000+ banks (8M active users), as well as the multi-tier web and API integration servers that interface to core online banking systems and third parties. Our solutions are configurable with varying degrees of customisation of features and branding. The banking domain is very strict and risk averse! Reliability and quality are particularly important. I've found testing our product complicated, difficult & challenging.
- (2019-2020) - Sole developer of
- Postman Testrunner Framework for automated integration checks.
- Quick glance dashboard (and associated data API) written in Node.js/Express.js/Pug
- Splunk setup, data indexing, dashboard monitors etc. of historic results
- (2017-2018) - QA member of agile teams delivering changes to a range of mobile banking solutions.
- Whilst working at Fiserv I worked with the following technologies
- Postman/Newman/Javascript/TV4 JSON validator
- Node.js/Express.js/Pug (Simple Web UI, Data API for test results, task scripting, data analysis)
- Splunk (system monitoring, setup data collectors, creating new dashboards)
- TFS (Git repos, build server, and script scheduling)
- Powershell (System deployment automation & TFS)
- Octopus (deployment engine)
- Specflow/C# (Gherkin API automation)
- Mobile functional, accessibility, iOS upgrade testing
- Platform API functional testing
- XMind (Mind Mapping Tool)
- Fiddler/Burp Suite (Network capturing)
- Soap UI (API testing)
Contracting - Engel Consulting (Sep 2016 - Dec 2016)
- Helping Kim Engel with some smaller projects. see more...
Senior Software Test Analyst – Trade Me (Dec 2014 - Aug 2016)
| References |
| 2016 Trade Me Motors - Jason Cullum |
| 2016 Mike Berry - Delivery Mgr |
- Part of small squad (cross functional agile team) testing software changes to the iconic NZ Trade Me website (Motors Group) covering
- context driven, tool assisted exploratory testing, using session and thread based techniques
- testing DB, UI, API, and architectural changes
- leading the deployment of changes using Trade Me's continuous integration and continuous delivery processes
- splunk system monitoring
- agile methods and squad mastering
- test automation for API (Ready!API/SoapUI) and UI changes (tractor/protractor) using BDD with Gherkin syntax.
- test planning and peer test reviews
- visual test tools (eg mindmaps for test planning and video capture of test sessions etc)
- Jira for test plans, managing test sessions, and defect work flow. Confluence wiki for test practice documentation.
- active contributor to test and agile guilds
- new staff induction and junior staff support
- see more...
Software Tester – LeasePlan NZ (Apr 2013 - Dec 2014)
- Full time testing contractor to the IS department, testing a variety of bespoke applications primarily for internal use.
- Complex quotation app for car leasing built in MS-Access
- Online driver FBT data collection portal (UI, web security, data flows, emailing)
- Character based legacy (AS-400) system testing
- Developed a test automation framework for above character based system.
- At LPNZ I was introduced to testing as a proper profession by my friend Christina Linwood. I attended the NZ Tester Magazine conference, and went to a full day workshop on Risk Based Testing by Matt Mansell. It was exhilarating to learn from people passionate about testing.
Prior to 2013
Related wiki pages
References
Volunteering
Professional Development
Education
Presentations, Posts, and blogs
What I'm reading, watching, listening, learning, and trying out in 2024
Interesting Reads
- A Context Driven Approach to Automation in Testing By James Bach and Michael Bolton
- Round Earth Test Strategy by James Bach
- Interesting alternative to the "test automation pyramid". There are testing problems to consider at every level, Quality above requires quality below.
My Observability Project
- Express.js basic hello world and my node.js-in-the-cloud repo
- Kubernetes vs. Docker by Josh Campbell at Atlassian
- I want to learn the difference between these technologies to see how it might apply to my Observability Project
- Setting up Docker Desktop at home to run the Docker Splunk Image
<end>
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