Welcome to our Meet the Team series, where we look at the lives of various Planit team members from across the company. We caught up with Harold Linao, an engineer with our Perth team since 2019, to find out about his experience and skills, trying performance testing for the first time, and his various hobbies.
What is your career background?
The first IT-related job I got after my Bachelor degree was as a Technical Service Desk Analyst. My degree’s major was computer networking, so that’s what my long-term career goal was.
After a year, I had a change of heart and decided to try something else. I wanted to try my programming skills as a software developer, so I joined another company. Unfortunately, it turned out that that company didn’t have any more spots for developers on its bootcamp.
Instead, I was accepted for the company’s QA bootcamp. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise because that would start my career as a software tester. From then, I went on to learn and specialise in test automation, and I’m still in this industry after more than eight years.
What are your key areas of expertise?
I think API and UI test automation are the two areas that I’m the most proficient with in testing.
What do you love about your job?
I love logical thinking and problem solving, so those are the aspects of the job I like the most.
What makes you great at your job?
One thing that people have often said about my work is that I have consistently delivered on time at a high quality.
What do you love about your team?
They’re hard working, help each other, and readily share knowledge.
What do you love about working for Planit?
I like how I can openly talk to my manager. It’s something that I was never able to do or felt comfortable doing in my past jobs.
What's your favourite challenge solved in the line of duty?
I’m somewhat new to performance testing and I was assigned to my first task of doing test script development in JMeter. When working on the code, there were some issues that I was able to work out by myself with some trial and error.
However, there was one issue that I simply was not able to solve on my own, so I finally asked for help from a senior performance tester.
What was the solution and results?
It turned out the issue was related to authentication. After I received that insight, I was able to connect the dots, solve the puzzle, and set the right authentication to make the script work.
What have you been doing in your free time recently?
I like watching movies, playing computer games, building Gundam kits, and photography. I also like to stay active with basketball, biking, and swimming. But of course, I should say that I love spending time with my wife the most!
Interested in joining the Planit family? Visit our Careers page for a full listing of current opportunities across Australia, New Zealand, India, and the UK, and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram for the latest job updates.