
WHEN
-
WHAT
TestBash Online
WHERE
Online
COST
Pro or Ticket
Are you looking to hire or get hired? Looking for a new career or position in Software Testing? Looking to improve interviewing skills or your personal development?
TestBash Careers will help you achieve those goals!
Register now and stay tunned for more details coming soon...
Thanks to Our Sponsor
Check what sponsorship packages are available, download the brochure here.
Meet Your Hosts

Vernon Richards
QUALITY COACH / SENIOR QUALITY ENGINEER

Gwen Diagram
ENGINEERING MANAGER
Gwen Diagram is a technology professional from Leeds who specialises in testing. She is an avid automation evangelist with a focus on testing complemented by repeatable build processes with monitoring. She has had varied roles throughout her career including Scrum Master at a Start Up, Engineering Manager at a bank and DevOps kid at a large Financial Services organisation. She is currently an Engineering Manager at Sonocent in Leeds.
As a strong believer in making the tech industry as open and punk as possible, she co-organises a twice yearly free day long testing conference called the Leeds Testing Atelier. She speaks regularly at local meet-up groups, Agile Yorkshire and Leeds DevOps, duels with creative types at events like the Tech Off, speaks internationally at conferences such as Nordic Testing Days in Tallinn and was the closing keynote at Agile on the Beach in Falmouth, UK in 2018.
Outside of work, you will usually find her hanging around a Natural History Museum somewhere in the world marvelling at how incredibly excellent dinosaurs are, feeding pigeons or ducks or obsessing over transport.

Callum Akehurst-Ryan
SENIOR QA TESTER

Jenna Charlton
QUALITY DRIVEN PRODUCT OWNER
Meet Your Speakers

Mirza Sisic
TESTING CONSULTANT

Maryam Umar
HEAD OF QA

Lee Marshall
PIRATE TESTER

Srinivas Murthy
PRINCIPAL QUALITY ANALYST

Conor Fitzgerald
HEAD OF TESTING

Rahul Parwal
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER

David Williams
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING MANAGER

Ajay Balamurugadas
SENIOR DIRECTOR - QE, GSPANN TECHNOLOGIES

Eduardo Fischer dos Santos
QUALITY ASSURANCE ENGINEER

Jokin Aspiazu
FELLOW TESTER

Mahathee Dandibhotla
SENIOR ENGINEERING LEAD QUALITY

Niko Mangahas
HEAD OF QUALITY ENGINEERING PRACTICE
Peet Michielsen
SENIOR SYSTEMS VERIFICATION ENGINEER

Nicola Martin
HEAD OF QUALITY ENGINEERING

Elizabeth Zagroba
QUALITY LEAD

Kiruthika Ganesan
HEAD OF QUALITY ASSURANCE

Ioan Solderea
QA

Suman Bala
TEST ARCHITECT
The times below are for
A brief overview of my tips on how to market yourself better as a Software Tester, and a few words about myself followed by tips on how content creation can help you in marketing yourself better, as a software tester.
Takeaways
- Prioritise to put yourself out there with content creation
- Recognise how blogging can help
- Recognise how video tutorial creation can help
- Recognise how podcast creation can help

Mirza Sisic
TESTING CONSULTANT
Takeaways
- Rejection is not always a bad thing
- Having career goals helps to overcome the feeling of being stuck
- It is actually not difficult to start riding the horse which you have ridden before. It’s just muscle memory

Maryam Umar
HEAD OF QA
In this session, Lee Marshall, aka 'The Pirate Tester' talks about the book 'Be More Pirate' by Sam Conniff Allende and how it has helped him with his career.

Lee Marshall
PIRATE TESTER
Srinivas Murthy works as a Principal Consultant for more than 14 years across various industries, domains, cultures and regions. Through these various roles, Srinivas has a strong influence on where the QA community can be taken to within the organisation at a global level and is hoping to share some of this knowledge with people outside the organisation and hopefully help people make an impact.
In this session, hosted by the great Vernon Richards, Srinivas will be answering questions about Careers, from our attendees live on the Main Stage.
Takeaways
- Confidence about growing in their careers, attending interviews and performance reviews

Srinivas Murthy
PRINCIPAL QUALITY ANALYST
This session will focus on leveraging public speaking to your benefit. We will cover community meetups, user groups, workshops and conferences.
Takeaways
- Identify the benefit of meetups and user groups
- Identify benefits of conferences & workshops

Mirza Sisic
TESTING CONSULTANT
Now we will cover how to use social media to your benefit, to become more visible to the recruiters, build up your online presence and reputation and the social aspect of your GitHub profile.
Takeaways
- Identify benefits of social media, such as LinkedIn
- Identify the social media aspect of GitHub

Mirza Sisic
TESTING CONSULTANT
Over my 15 years plus career, I have learnt many lessons from both sides of the interview table.
Whether you are looking for your first testing role or looking for your next opportunity this talk is packed with real-world interview experiences and lessons you can apply.
Takeaways
- How to navigate the entire interview process
- How to create great resumes and cover letters
- Tips for standing out from other candidates
- How to prepare for the interview and what to do during the interview
- How to approach technical interviews
- Negotiating the optimum offer

Conor Fitzgerald
HEAD OF TESTING
A great many self-improvement books exist that claim that they can change your life. Yet stories and real-life observations are what make us better human beings and can help us advance in our careers and enrich our lives.
This book by Prakash Iyer has nudged me to unlearn, relearn, and reflect. I now understand the importance of taking action to boost my career.
I will cover some insights from this book during this talk.

Rahul Parwal
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER
VALUE!
How often do you look at the "Value" of your work? Do you evaluate the Value of what you are doing, before, during, and (importantly!) after you do it? Do you understand your Value to your business, your department, your team, your career and even to your daily life?
This talk will teach you about "Value", from my perspective as a hiring manager and an engineering professional.
What do I look for in the candidates I interview, and how can you "sell" your Value to a potential employer to show what you bring to a business?
You can start right now to track the Value you generate each day, building-up a wealth of real-world examples that you can use to talk confidently in your career growth conversations, in interview settings, and even at conferences with peers.
By sharing my own experiences and anecdotes from a 19 year career in engineering, testing, quality and leadership, I will paint high-level pictures of some of the responsibilities I had, for you to map to your own experiences and spot the (often hidden!) opportunities to generate Value.
Come and listen to the strategies that I have used as an employee that helped me understand the context and scope of my work and team, which then helped me to start understanding how I could generate Value in that role, and how I used that to drive my career growth?
Stories like:
- How thinking about Value helped me get promoted to a "team trainer" a year into my career.
- How using Value helped me to move from a product team I didn't want to be on, to one that I did!
- How I used Value to persuade my employer to fund a 4 day training course to further my career.
- And many more similar Valuable (hah!) stories for you to think about how you too can tap into Value
Takeaways
- Understand different roles and responsibilities, and have ideas on generating Value in them
- Use the concept of Value to better structure your role and responsibilities on the impact you can make
- Track the Value of your daily work (I've helped 3 people to get promoted using these ideas)
- Talk confidently about Value and impact using your own examples to absolutely catapult your career

David Williams
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING MANAGER
Across his 19 years in the field of engineering, quality and testing he's been a web developer, tester, senior, team lead, test manager, head of testing, and has helped businesses to build quality-centric engineering practices and a focus around delivering customer value. He's now leading mobile application engineering at Ada Health, to improve their mobile apps, and to mature their consumer domain's engineering and delivery practices.
We've also seen his award-winning talks at several international testing conferences, including TestBash Brighton, where he spoke about Mental Health in Testing.

Tip on How to Market Yourself Better as a Software Tester: Portfolio Website
In this part, we will discuss how can a personal portfolio be used to impress a potential employer.
Takeaways
- Develop a professional tester portfolio website
- Identify the social media aspect of GitHub

Mirza Sisic
TESTING CONSULTANT
Would you consider yourself a leader? In the book, Executive Presence, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an expert on workplace power and influence, shows how to identify and embody the Executive Presence one needs to succeed in their career.
We have seen many people not succeed as leaders, even though they have the potential to be a leader. A key missing piece is Executive Presence.
In this book recommendation, I will share some insights into how to demonstrate executive presence and why it's so imperative for having a long-lasting and fulfilling career.

Ajay Balamurugadas
SENIOR DIRECTOR - QE, GSPANN TECHNOLOGIES
In this session, Eduardo Fischer dos Santos, will be giving advice and answering any questions attendees might have about their careers.
This is an open session, during one of the breaks, that everyone can join in (with video or just on the chat).

Eduardo Fischer dos Santos
QUALITY ASSURANCE ENGINEER

Tip on How to Market Yourself Better as a Software Tester: Volunteer Activities
In this part we go through examples of volunteer activities and see how these can help you stand out.
Takeaways
- Recognise the advantages volunteer activities can bring to your career development

Mirza Sisic
TESTING CONSULTANT
How would you hire Junior Testers? In my place, we have a method. We hire people whiling to learn how to test, we train them for 10 weeks, we train them in Exploratory Testing, Java, Selenium... we run some practice sessions and at the end of this program, we have our Junior testers ready to join projects.
In this talk, I want to explain the training program, the budget and why we are betting on these people instead of just hiring Senior testers.
Takeaways
- Inspire other testers to run similar initiatives in their local markets
- How there is space in the testing world for more people, and this is a good way to enter it
- By explaining our numbers, we want to demonstrate that our model is reasonable and profitable for others to copy

Jokin Aspiazu
FELLOW TESTER
A book that has had an impact on my career: The Professional by Subroto Bagchi.
A manifesto on what it takes to be a true professional in the modern world. By common definition, a professional is anyone who possesses the skills and knowledge necessary for a career-whether as a surgeon, a software engineer, or a plumber.
But according to Subroto Bagchi, our increasingly global marketplace demands more. In a world where the foolish, selfish, and unethical decisions of a few have affected the lives of millions, The Professional urges readers to act responsibly and reexamine "business as usual".
By exploring a variety of professional dilemmas across many industries, Bagchi defines the qualities of true professionals and the attributes that separate them from the merely competent. These include:
- Suffer no false attractions: It's always tempting to take the path of least resistance, but true professionals can separate the genuine from the phoney.
- Know when to say no: True professionals are not afraid to say no to things that are not worth their time, their energy, or their creativity.
- Take the long view: True professionals understand that every action, decision, and relationship, no matter how small, can have a lasting impact

Mahathee Dandibhotla
SENIOR ENGINEERING LEAD QUALITY
This short presentation offers an updated perspective on what most modern organizations value in terms of quality, and how Quality Engineers and QE Teams will need to broaden their sphere of influence and skillsets to meet those expectations.
We will look at it from 2 perspectives – how Testing needs to evolve as a discipline, and how Quality could expand to take on emerging roles in the organization.
Takeaways
- The Quality Engineer role needs to keep evolving to be considered a high-value discipline in the organization
- The Quality Engineer can expand existing software testing scope farther (TestOps), wider (Experience QA), and deeper (Data Quality)
- The QE Team can also evolve to take on emerging Business, Process and Technology roles in a DevOps environment

Niko Mangahas
HEAD OF QUALITY ENGINEERING PRACTICE
In this Discussion session, our wonderful host Callum Akehurst-Ryan is joined by three career experts to discuss ways to improve your CVs and make them stand out.
Elizabeth Zagroba is Quality Lead at Mendix in Rotterdam. Her goal is to guide enough testers, leaders, etc. to make herself redundant so she can take on new and bigger challenges. You can find Elizabeth's big thoughts on her blog.
Nicola Martin is passionate about increasing diversity and inclusion in software engineering. She is a panellist and speaker with over 20 years of experience in tech and she speaks at global conferences focusing on quality, testing, diversity, women in tech and mentoring.
Peet Michelsen is a seasoned software tester with over 20 years of experience who specialises in test automation, test management and continuous integration. In his work, he wants to be challenged and is always on the lookout for the next problem to solve. And when not working, Peet likes to explore the Scottish countryside and enjoy a good ale or whisky.
Takeaways
- Ways to improve your CVs and how they can get noticed

Elizabeth Zagroba
QUALITY LEAD

Nicola Martin
HEAD OF QUALITY ENGINEERING
Peet Michielsen
SENIOR SYSTEMS VERIFICATION ENGINEER
In this session, happening during one of the breaks, Niko will be answering any questions live and giving tips on how to create a good CV.
You'll be able to join Niko, with video or just on the chat.
If you would like Niko to review your CV before the event and chat to him about it, during this session, please upload your CV here or send it to Niko Mangahas with the subject: TestBash Careers - CV Advice Session with Niko.

Niko Mangahas
HEAD OF QUALITY ENGINEERING PRACTICE
Takeaways
- Career breaks could be good, relaxing and fun if planned a little. How to leave the door open to return back to work within the same organisation?
- How to cope when the career break is not a planned one- How to join the workforce again after the break?
- Some stories both personal and from others which helped me make the decisions during tough times

Kiruthika Ganesan
HEAD OF QUALITY ASSURANCE
In this talk, Ioan shows how this book by Steve Krug has improved his testing and consequently, his career.

Ioan Solderea
QA
Finding your next role can be a bit exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Another layer of complexity adds when you must find a job in a new country.
In this talk, I’ll share my experiences in job hunting when I moved to the UK in 2014 and the tips on how to land a job on a new island.
Takeaways
- Understand the challenges of finding a job in a new country
- Learn how to tackle the above challenges
- Identify how can you help someone new on your team

Suman Bala
TEST ARCHITECT
- Content Creation
- Public Speaking
- Social Media
- Portfolio Website
- Volunteer Activities
In this session, I'll draw a conclusion to the above and will be answering live all the questions you have.
Takeaways
- Prioritise to put yourself out there by leveraging content creation - writing blog posts about testing, and creating video tutorials and podcasts
- Plan to establish yourself as a relevant professional, using public speaking at meetups, conferences, user groups and practical workshops
- Use social media to improve your online presence
- Develop a GitHub profile which illustrates your practical knowledge, to demonstrate you can make an automated checking framework, and more
- Identify how to develop a professional tester portfolio website, which can give you better visibility in search engine results - have basic SEO in mind
- Collaborate with the testing communities, and their members to increase the number of people in your personal network - a good referral can give you a big advantage over other candidates when applying for jobs
- Recognise the advantage of volunteer activities, such as pro-bono mentoring, or contributing to Open Source
- Conclude how to use all the above, to get more lucrative job offers, negotiate more perks, explain to recruiters why you are worth more than the initial offer, and/or after applying the above for a while, use it to explain at your current job why you deserve a better raise

Mirza Sisic
TESTING CONSULTANT
It's not a TestBash without 99-Second Talks!
The 99-Second Talks is the attendee's stage, an opportunity for you to come on stage and talk for, that's right, 99 seconds.
This time we will be experimenting with something new: you will be given the opportunity to pre-record your 99-Seconds Talk throughout the conference. This will then be shown at the end of the day and/or added to the MoT Learning Platform after the event.
You can talk about anything, a testing topic you want to share, a personal experience, an idea sparked by all the amazing talks you've just listened to... the stage is yours, for 99-Seconds!
If doing the talk live on the main stage, our beautiful host Jenna Charlton will introduce you on stage and start the clock. As soon as the time's up, a noise will be heard and that's it: time's up!
Prerequisites
You will need to give your web browser permissions to allow your camera and microphone. Make sure these are enabled before you go on screen.

TestBash Online
All the Magic of TestBash from Your Own Home
Latest Topics and Trends
All our talks are anonymously reviewed by the community meaning we bring you your best talks from a diverse range of speakers.
Community Love
TestBash Online provides our vibrant community the opportunity to connect, network and share ideas.
Single Track
TestBash Online conferences are single track meaning that you won't miss any sessions.
Included in Pro
All our TestBash Online conferences are available with Pro Membership. Some are even free.
Recorded
We record all the talks at our TestBash Online software testing conferences and make them available to watch on-demand for Pro Members and ticket holders.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Attend
TestBash Careers as well as all online TestBashes are included in Pro membership which makes it by far the most affordable way to attend. Pro MoT is £249.99 per year with discounts for teams and a monthly option for individual memberships. Alternatively, you can buy a ticket just for the event for £75 - these are now available!
Sponsorship
We want this online conference to be all about Careers and are actively looking for sponsors for the event. Email marketing@ministryoftesting.com to learn more about our sponsorship options.
Where is the event hosted?
TestBash Careers is hosted on Hopin, an excellent platform for events like this. You'll need to create a Hopin account to access the event.
How do I join the event?
1. Double check you're logged into your MoT Account. You'll see your avatar and name in the top right-hand corner.
2. Visit the Hopin event space at https://hopin.com/events
3. Enter the password sent to you in an email/or by visiting the top of the event page (Look for the "Join Details" section, on the page you're reading this FAQ) - Available one week before the event!
4. On the Hopin event space, select "Join Event"
5. When prompted to SELECT TICKETS, select "Sign in to join the event" (at this point you can create a Hopin account if you don't have one already)
6. Close the "CHECKOUT" page
7. Select "Join Event" again
8. Congrats, you're now in the reception area of the event 🎉