I. About Me
My path to this point has been circuitous, but I believe that my diverse background makes me a stronger candidate for prospective employers than others who may have more experience in a specific field. I wouldn't be who I am today without all that has come before, and I know that my capability to learn and my dextrous adaptability make me a suitable fit for many various roles.
In 1997, I enrolled at the University of New Hampshire where I spent some time exploring subjects such as Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science before settling in to work through a dual major program, earning degrees in Mathematics and English.
While in school, I worked for UNH's InterOperability Lab, a group of consortiums that laid the groundwork for the Internet as we know it now, providing resources for any telecommunication company to ensure the compatability of their equipment with anything else that might be out there. I worked in the DSL consortium, testing DSL modems and backend devices to confirm that equipment from different companies could work together, and provide feedback to companies if it didn't. Lots of hands-on testing with new devices against the IEEE specs for DSL.
After college, I struggled for a bit finding my path. I tried my hand at graphic and web design, where I started to learn HTML and CSS, and led me to my first full-time job as a text book compositor. My design skills were utilized in taking customer input and building specs for myself and other compositors to use in laying out the pages. Some interpretation required!
As valuable as my design skills was my general knowledge of computers. In that role, I worked in every system we had, bouncing between Mac and Windows, and several different software packages. Adobe alone had two different layout packages, both vastly different. I also had to work occasionally in XML and XPP - a sort of hybrid of CSS and XML.
During that time, I started performing some freelance IT and tech-support work for the company that ran the ticketing for a couple of local fairs. They provided point-of-sale equipment - touch-screen registers, ticket printers, and ticket scanners - as well as online sales and will-call orders. I acted as on-site tech support, handling any technical issues that arose, as well as setting up in the morning and shutting down sales stations at night. In addition, I trained new sellers and was on-site throughout the day responded to a variety of issues, from printers not working, to the touch screens not working, and customer order issues.
Working this job opened up an opportunity for me at Seahorse Bioscience in 2012. Though I'd had almost no biology or lab work in my background to this point, the manager of the Applications Engineering team took a chance on me. I admit I was overwhelmed at first, but it wasn't long before I was a vital member of the team. I learned about lab work, biology, the instrument we built and sold, and the software we developed in-house. I assisted manufacturing in QC of new instruments, and helped chase down failures seen by our customers. Over the next few years, our team grew, and we each started to have our own focus. Mine was on validation and verification, and leaned more towards the software side. It was here that I learned about Atlassian Jira, as well as R scripting for more elegant data processing than just using Excel.
In 2015, Seahorse was acquired by Agilent Technologies. The following year, our office moved from Billerica to a fancier office space in Lexington. I continued to learn R and data processing, as well as obtaining certifications in Software Testing (Foundation Level and Agile Testing) from ASTQB, and passing the Certified Quality Engineer exam. In 2018, I was promoted from associate to engineer. My focus shifted even more towards software testing, helping build and maintain test grids, as well as writing and executing test cases for hardware projects. I did research into evaporation in our cell plates, validated new computers to control our instruments, and worked on various projects that continued to improve the accuracy of the data collected by our instrument. On the software side, I helped validate the new cloud-based version of our software, and assisted in the creation of an automated Data QC function, taking the specs we used for manual testing and translating them into a format that could be tested algorithmically.
In 2020, when the global pandemic shut everything down, we were sent home, with only a skeleton crew of workers allowed in the building at any one time. Under these conditions, we had to plan our work carefully, ensuring a balance between work we could do remotely and work that had to be done in the lab. For some projects, I was able to take instruments home, for others I could connect to lab computers resmotely. During this time, I helped to release several physical products, including an upgraded version of our instrument.
As the pandemic ended and we returned to the office, I felt that I needed to find my place in the company. I had my hands in many different aspects, but the one that called to me the most was software. During lockdown, I had begun to work more closely with the software team, and wanted to continue that transition. Noting that they needed help with creating automated tests for the cloud software, I learned C# and Selenium to help. Again, this was a struggle. I know some R and some Python, but C# is a different language. In just under a year, I was able to teach myself enough of the language to write tests of my own and make valuable contributions to that team.
Unfortunately, at the end of 2023, to strengthen the business Agilent had been forced to undergo some restructuring. Early in 2024, they decided to take it a step further and elminate several roles. Sadly, mine was one of them. I am proud of the work I did there and grateful for the role for introducing me to the world of software testing and development. Since the separation, I have spent time deepening my understanding of programming languages and the software world, and I am excited to embark on the next step of my journey, knowing that my diverse history and skillset allow me a broad range of opportunities.
