Welcome to week 9! We’re one post away from our final Employee Spotlight, but it’s not the end yet!
Last week you met Pole, and on week 5 you met Vidhya, who are both parts of the QA Team. This week you’ll meet our QA Team Lead, Ranjith, who shares a more in-depth conversation about his role and experiences.
He also gives valuable advice to anyone starting out in the industry!

Ranjith Kumar | QA Team Lead & QA Automation Engineer

“Aequilibrium is definitely different from any company I’ve worked for—there’s a very friendly environment.”

Ranjith showing off some of his quality style!

Tell us a bit about what you do at Aequilibrium.

I joined Aequilibrium in November 2020 as the QA Team Lead, checking the quality of applications. For example, we are creating a user and we have to think in multiple ways how we can test that page, such as positive and negative scenarios.

How were your first six months?

So far, all of my priorities are getting to know the automation and tools we use. How we can improve the tools of QA testing, for instance. I currently have four projects and my work is more focused on manual testing rather than automation testing.

What about your role inspires you most?

What inspires me the most is the quality of the product. I believe this is an essential step of every project, it doesn’t matter what we’re working on. I like to keep a customer perspective in mind when I perform my work. I love what I do.

What is it like to work from home?

With the pandemic, I believe everyone should have a good work-life balance and take care of their health. Working from 9–5 works for everyone and at Aequilibrium our schedules are flexible depending on the situation. In my previous work, I worked remotely and it was all new to me, but I really got habituated when I joined Aequilibrium. I was already used to working from home. We can skip the traffic and spend some time travelling, so definitely some positive aspects.

Ranjith at the gondola in Banff, Alberta

Tell us about your career path in the professional services sector.

I was basically a QA and worked with multiple applications. Most of my work was contract and I focused on that for a while. It was really great working in different places and I learned a lot. For example, I was doing automation in Java and later I got the chance to learn C#. In every project, I learn something new and each project has a different learning curve. Once I joined Aequilibrium, I learned that I should have a ‘stopping point’ and grow from there.

What is different about working in the professional services sector?

Aequilibrium is definitely different from any company I’ve worked for. In other companies, I worked exclusively for that company, for their own projects. Here, I have the chance to work with different projects and clients, talk directly with the clients and get those projects done. There’s a lot of communication. The main difference is the client-facing aspect of the role, which is challenging but exciting. I’d be happy if in the future more people join the QA team and I get to lead them, although right now is also great.

What is different about working in the banking and finance sector?

When dealing with banks, there is a mathematical aspect of projects that we don’t see in other projects. Most of the financial services use test-driven development. There are more things to be tested to produce higher quality applications and software.

Ranjith enjoying a kayak day in Squamish, BC

What is great about your team?

As a QA, I work alone but I support Backbase engineers. If they have any questions they come to me and sometimes I use their help in testing applications. I had a lot of interaction with all team members in different teams and whenever I have a question they are very responsive and I’m very happy to have that. I felt a very friendly environment different from other organizations.

What advice would you give someone who is starting their career in the bank and finance/professional services sector?

They should be focusing on the requirements they get from the developers and be specific on what they are testing. My advice is to understand the exact requirements for the testing. When we focus on those aspects it will be more profitable to the end customer.

Interested in joining the Aequilibrium team?

Check out our Careers Page and don’t forget to stay social with us!

Read this article on Medium.