A Day in the Life of Plamen Angelov, QA Engineer at Progress

Learn more about the culture and day-to-day happenings at our company from someone who has experienced it all: a Progress employee.

When you’re looking for jobs, there’s only so much you can find out about a company from a quick Internet search. Sure, you may know what they do, where they’re located and how to contact them, but what is it really like to work there? What’s the culture like? How do you know if you’ll fit?

We wanted to offer a glimpse into what it’s like to work at Progress from the perspective of one of our own. Plamen Angelov has worked as an engineer for over a year now, and his team takes innovation (and food) seriously. Read on to know what it’s like to walk in Plamen’s shoes for a day.

Tell us a little about yourself and your role at Progress.

I am Plamen Angelov. My current position is Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer, and I am a part of the Fiddler team. I joined Progress in October 2021. I really enjoy visiting new countries and exploring their cultures—I believe that this brings the most value to a person.

What does a typical day look like for you?

The first thing I do in the morning after I start working is check my email and run automation tests. Afterwards, we have a meeting with the other QAs from the team to plan and assign the tasks for the day so we can work more effectively. We also have daily Scrum meetings with the team. Later, everyone starts in on their tasks; my usual task is to test new features for the next release or create new automation tests. It's nice to be able to test new features manually and then automate tests for them—it allows for out-of-the-box thinking and variety, of course.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

When you see that the result of your work contributes to solving a problem, there is no way you don't feel pleasure. Also, I am a part of an Innovation team. An innovation team's primary objective is to pioneer something new at a company. In our case we are developing an improved version of Fiddler, Fiddler Еverywhere—а best-in-class network debugging solution used by thousands globally.

As I am a junior QA engineer, this has helped me further develop my testing skills because we add new features very dynamically and work with the best-suited and most secure technologies, such as Java, Selenium, GitHub and Jira. It makes the daily work feel more exciting.

Tell us a bit about your team and its culture.

I would say that there are no unfamiliar topics for the people on our team—no matter what the conversation is about, they always have something to say. We always help each other. Everyone on the team has the highest level of humor. The first question after every daily Scrum is, “Where are we going to eat?”

It is not a coincidence that we wore “Foodler” t-shirts (derived from the name of our product, Fiddler) at our Christmas charity bazaar in the Sofia office.

What are some of your favorite things about working at Progress?

As you probably know, when you start your driving lessons, the instructor prefers you to have no experience, as bad habits tend to be harder to unlearn. One of the reasons why I wanted to start my career as a QA engineer at Progress is because I wanted to learn from the best. It was important to be able to build a good base, and I was confident that this was the company where I could achieve my goal of becoming an accomplished professional in the field.

What is your proudest moment or biggest career accomplishment so far?

Of course, I’ve had moments that I consider big achievements, but I believe that they should be confirmed by my team. At this company you can always feel it when you’ve accomplished something, because we have a system where you can get points based on your performance called Praise. My first formal recognition came on my second month when I and the other QA Engineer on our team managed to test another version very fast, and the team was able to fix all the bugs within hours, ensuring our clients would be happy and satisfied.

How do you spend your time after work?

I love playing sports and my hobby is going to the gym. I also enjoy hiking with my girlfriend and my dog. Time spent in nature always recharges me.

How does Progress keep you motivated?

From the time that I’ve been at the company, I can confidently say that the management and leadership teams care about the employees and allow them to maintain a good work-life balance. There are ongoing initiatives to keep up the good team spirit, and our Fiddler team even has plans next week to get together. We also always work with new technologies, and there are a lot of opportunities to grow professionally.

Interested in joining the Fiddler team as a QA engineer? Apply today.

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