This week on the Employee Spotlight blog, we feature Emily Allen, Skykit’s QA Team Lead. Emily shares her evolution into QA and what exciting challenges and fun spring will bring.
Tell me a bit about your role?
I lead the software Quality Assurance (QA) team at Skykit. We’re responsible for testing Skykit’s products from end to end, from enrolling and managing devices all the way through to creating and configuring content and playing it on a screen.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
I love collaborating with other teams to solve customer problems. Sometimes, that means working with our design and development teams if we encounter usability issues on a new feature we’re building. Other times that’s digging in with our support team to figure out why something isn’t working for a customer.
Tell me about your evolution from a Journalism student, with a Public Relations background, to QA and software engineering?
I studied journalism and English in college and graduated at a time when jobs in journalism were hard to come by. After graduation, I worked in public relations and event planning, neither of which was a great fit for me. Eventually, I was hired in a search engine optimization (SEO) role at a recruitment marketing software company. It was there that I eventually had the opportunity to take on a QA role, and it was something I immediately took to and have been doing ever since.
What from your background do you find most helpful in your current role?
While going from studying English and journalism to software might seem like a big shift, I find testing software feels a lot like editing someone else’s writing, where asking lots of questions and coming at things with a fresh perspective can be critical.
What do you see as your next challenge?
We have some exciting features for Skykit Beam coming up next quarter that will be pretty complex to test that I’m excited about.
When you’re not in the office what do you enjoy doing?
I have two daughters (seven and almost two years old) that keep me pretty busy. I also love to cook and spend a lot of time staring blankly at my husband after he makes elaborate puns. (He’s been running a live pun competition for almost a decade called Pundamonium.)
What are you most looking forward to this spring?
I’m taking my family to Panama City Beach, Florida next month, where I used to go for vacations as a kid. It’ll be my youngest’s first time seeing the ocean and the first big family trip we’ve been able to take since the start of the pandemic.
