Engineering // People & Culture

Meet the Team:
Anaïs, Test Engineer

Mar 4, 2022  |  Reading Time: 3 minutes

“Meet the Team” is a blog series that features the different roles at Antidot/Fluid Topics. 

Today, we’re sitting down with Anaïs Fournier, Test Engineer, to discuss her role within our company.

Happy International Women’s Day Anaïs! Thank you for your time! We would love to hear a bit more about what a typical day looks like for you!

Becoming a Test Engineer (or Software Tester)

Meet the Team AnaïsMy journey to becoming a Test Engineer is pretty unexpected. I graduated from INSA Lyon with a Master’s degree in BioInformatics. I worked for 3 years, first, as a research engineer for the National Institute of Agricultural Research, a French public research institute dedicated to agricultural science, then at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology. I specialized in insect genomics (especially aphids and butterflies).

I decided to switch careers and retrain as a software tester in 2016. I didn’t know anything about this role, but I knew I wanted a more tangible job with a real and immediate application. When you test a software, the goal is clear, the software needs to work in the end. That’s what attracted me to this career.

My role

I joined Antidot/Fluid Topics in September 2020. I work in the Product Knowledge team alongside Rémi Bove, Head of Documentation and Training, and Leanna Inzalaco, Technical Writer.

My role is to test Fluid Topics, our software solution, to identify potential issues and ensure that it performs as expected.

When people think about software testing, they probably imagine someone doing the same tasks over and over again. Truth be told, that’s also what I thought before I got really interested in this job.

Obviously, I would be lying if I said that some of the tasks were not repetitive. But each day feels different to me and one of the things I love about this job is that I never stop learning. When it comes to the agile process, I love the fact that I am part of all the stages of Fluid Topics’ development lifecycle. From the project initiation to the release in production (and after), I have a role to play.

Finding bugs is my favorite part of the job and testing allows me to pinpoint and report most of them (hopefully!). Ensuring that the technical specifications are well-written, or that tests cases are clear is key to catching bugs early on. And the sooner we find bugs, the better it is!

My tools

We use JIRA to create stories, tasks or bugs. I also have a risk management board that I use to track the risk of each ticket. It highlights which story should be prioritized and it optimizes the testing effort. As you can imagine, I always prioritize tickets with the highest risk level.

I also use Squash, a testing management tool, to store all my tests and organize regression test campaigns. Finally I use (and love) Postman. It eases the API testing process.

Last words of wisdom

Although software testers’ main goal is to find bugs, everyone on the team is working to ensure software quality. Software testers are advocates of good quality practices.

To become a software tester, you’ll need to enjoy collaborating with others. In fact, communication is a large part of the job. I personally spend a lot of time with Developers, Product Owners, Designers, Customer Support and Professional Services. As most of the team is based in Lyon (and I’m near Aix-en-Provence), this is done on Zoom 😊.

At Fluid Topics, we also have a great work/life balance and if you’re looking for a new adventure, I’d definitely recommend joining the team.

Thank you Anaïs for giving us an insight into your typical day (and week)!  

Does Anaïs' story inspire you?

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About The Author

Anne-Sophie Lardet

Anne-Sophie Lardet

Anne-Sophie has over 10 years experience in product and digital marketing in fast-growing tech startups. Additionally, she has experience in UX design, social media, content strategy and marketing communications. She's passionate about helping start-ups understand, engage and support their customers.