Simon Davison
420 Alberto Way Unit 36
Los Gatos, CA 95032
nosivadnomis@yahoo.com

Cell Phone: (408) 656-2645

Home Phone: (408) 358-8705

 

Product Quality Assurance and Usability

 

OBJECTIVE

Senior User interface tester

 

TARGET JOB

Target Job Title:

Senior User interface tester / Quality Assurance Tester

 

 

 

Desired Job Type:

Contract Employee

 

 

Desired Status:

Full-Time

 

 

Desired Salary:

Negotiable

 

 

Site Location:

North California, US

 

 

 

TARGET COMPANY

Company Size:

No Preference

 

 

Category:

Software and Hardware

 

 

 

EXPERIENCE

 

 

 

10/2002 – Present

Yahoo! / Overture Inc / Alta Vista, Inc.

Employee

London, UK

California, US

 

Title

User Interface Quality Assurance Tester

 

Technology Used:

·          Algorithmic Search

·          Local Search

·          Mercury Test Director & QuickTest

·          Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest

·          Bugzilla

 

 

Duties included:

.

·          Developing, implementing and managing software quality assurance processes and procedures for Yahoo!’s Search and Marketplace division

·          Working closely with engineering managers, project managers, product marketing, and production support to deliver a quality release per commitment and in a timely fashion. Guaranteed “no surprises” releases, learning from past issues and growth areas.

·          Identifying and evaluate opportunities to leverage third-party resources (tools, consultants, contractors) and justifies the need for such resources to engineering management.

·          Communicating alternative product solutions to other members of the Engineering Management Staff.

·          Migrate AlltheWeb onto AltaVista’s platform, then (through Yahoo’s acquisition) migrate both AllTheWeb and all 26 AltaVista sites onto a Yahoo! PHP based platform.

 

Reason for leaving: Yahoo’s headcount restriction meant that I was unable to join their search team after my project was complete.

 

4/2001 – 10/2002

Alta Vista, Inc.

Employee

Reading, Berks, UK

 

Title

Manager, Quality Assurance International

 

Technology Used:

·          Algorithmic Search

·          Local Search

·          Mercury Test Director & QuickTest

·          Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest

·          Bugzilla

 

Duties included:

·          Developing, implementing and managing software quality assurance processes and procedures for Alta Vista’s International Search division

·          Working closely with engineering managers, project managers, product marketing, and production support to deliver a quality release per commitment and in a timely fashion.

·          Cooperating with other top management personnel to formulate, establish and maintain engineering policies and best practices, team building, operating procedures, objectives and goals.

·          Creating and execute plan for automating QA efforts, including automated test passes, bug verification, and test environment configuration.

·          Communicating alternative product solutions to other members of the Engineering Management Staff.

·          Conducting meetings to Coordinating processes and procedures both internal to QA and between departments.

·          Meeting outcomes include a list of actionable items with responsible parties for attaining objectives.

·          Participating in design and code reviews for development tasks internal to QA.

·          Supervising QA management and personnel. Developing, maintaining and evolving QA personnel requirements. Interviewing, hiring and training employees.

·          Migrate AltaVista’s 26+ websites onto a new Java based platform

 

Reason for leaving: Yahoo! Acquired Overture/Alta Vista

 

10/2000 - 4/2001

AltaVista, Inc

Employee

Maidenhead, UK

 

Title

International Quality Assurance Tester

 

Technology Used:

·          Algorithmic Search

·          Local Search

·          Machine Learned Ranking

·          Test Track Pro

 

Duties include:

·          Developing, implementing and manage software quality assurance processes and procedures for AltaVista’s International Search division

·          Working closely with engineering managers, project managers, product marketing, and production support to deliver a quality release per commitment and in a timely fashion.

·          Communicating alternative product solutions to other members of the Engineering Management Staff.

·          Participating in design and code reviews for development tasks internal to QA.

·          Migrate AltaVista’s 26+ websites onto a C/C++ platform

 

Reason for leaving: Promoted to Project  and QA Manager

 

12/1996 - 10/2000

Electronic Arts, Inc

Employee

Surrey, UK

 

Title

Localization Test Manager

 

Technology Used:

·          All home entertainment consoles

·          All handheld consoles

·          PC / MAC

·          VR headsets

Duties include:

·          Establish a test team for all localised software without creating additional headcount or extending development timeline

·          Responsible for ensuring that no product went to market with a localisation bug

·          Liaise and work directly with development teams in UK, US, Canada, Spain, Germany and France for local testing resources

·          Establish system to ensure development teams were able to avoid localisation problems before core workload was started

·          Project Manage over 100 products per year in at least 3 languages, the largest product having 10 languages

·          Work with Translators to update their internal glossary of terms

 

http://pc.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,26915/

 

Reason for leaving: To expand my knowledge of the Internet and prepare for the time when Internet based technology would be apart of everyone’s life.

 

2/1995 - 12/1996

Electronic Arts, Inc

Employee

Langley, UK

 

Title

Customer Service Representative / Quality Assurance Tester

 

Technology Used:

·          All home entertainment consoles

·          All handheld consoles

·          PC / MAC

·          Internal HTML based customer database

Duties include:

·          Answer all calls with 5 seconds

·          Resolve all customer issues on first call and log customer information without extending the call length.

·          Understand and advise on retail related issues (damaged media, lost manual and possible software pirates)

·          Report critical issues to QA team for further investigation

·          Reply to at least 10 customer letters/emails per day

·          Have a working knowledge of all Electronic Arts software on all platforms

·          Manual, box art, press release and spec verification against software to ensure no inconsistency

·          Complete and distribute test plans to other testers

·          Work as test lead and development contact for 10+ products on 3 platforms

 

Reason for leaving: I was promoted to Localization Test Manager

 

8/1990 - 2/1995

Product Development Services, Ltd

Self employed Contractor

Slough, UK

 

Title

Assistant Prototype Engineer

 

Technology Used:

·          CNC machinery

·          Manual tool making equipment

 

·          Working from imperial and metric design documents to create 19” rack mounts.

·          This included work for GEC, Plessey, GE and some government work.

·          Liaise with manufacturing foreman to establish best practice

·          Program CNC hardware for more complex steel working

 

Reason for leaving: To join the technology sector which was showing a rapid increase, and establish myself in an industry with more career possibilities.

 

 


EDUCATION

9/2003

Mercury Training Division

Palo Alto, Ca

 

 

Certification

 

 

TestDirector Certification

QuickTest Automation Certification


 

SKILLS

Skill Name

Skill Level

Last Used

Experience

 

 

HTML Development

Beginner

Currently used

1 year

 

 

Cross Platform Windows, Sony, Nintendo, Sega, Panasonic

Expert

Currently used

9 years

 

 

Palm OS Testing and Development

Intermediate

3+ years ago

1 year

 

 

Usability and acceptance testing

Expert

Currently used

9 years

 

 

World Wide Web Testing

Intermediate

Currently used

3+ years

 

 

Internationalization and Localization Testing

Expert

Currently used

7 years

 

 

Customer Service

Intermediate

5+ years ago

2 years

 

Algorithmic Search, Machine Learned Ranking, and Relevancy/Ranking Metrics validation

Beginner

Currently used

1+ years

 

 

 

Testing in Multi-Tiered Web App Env.(Web Farm)

Expert

Currently used

3+ years

 

 

Automation Tools

·          Test Director

·          QuickTest

·          LoadRunner

Beginner

Currently Used

1 year

 

Web Portal / search engine Integration and Testing

Intermediate

Currently used

3 years

 

 

Partner and OEM Relationship Management

Intermediate

1 year ago

3 years

 

Hands on Experience

Machines: Through current releases of HW: Mac, PC, Palm 3+, Pocket PC and all entertainment consoles from 1985 to present
Web Server Development: HTML and some Perl
Application Programs: Complete list of 50+ multi platform products furnished upon request.
Most Internet Browsers including Opera, Netscape, IE and AOL

Most Microsoft Software products.

Operating Systems: Knowledge of 0S is through current release or service pack unless noted. Mac 0S and OS X, MS DOS (5+), Windows (3.1.x), Windows (95, 98), Windows NT, Windows XP (Home and Tablet), Windows ME, Linux.
Handheld OS: Palm OS, Windows CE and Pocket PC 2000 /2002
Bug/Issue Tracking Systems: Bugzilla, ClearQuest, DDTS, Test Director, Test Track Pro

 

REFERENCES

Name

Jason Thebault

Site Operations Engineer, Yahoo

 

 

Phone Number:

650-444-6154

 

 

Email Address:

jasont@yahoo-inc.com

 

 

Reference Type:

Professional

 

 

Name

Erik Jessen

Director of International Search Engineering, Yahoo

 

 

Phone Number:

408-349-5106

 

 

Email Address:

erikj@yahoo-inc.com

 

 

Reference Type:

Professional

 

 

Name

Ian Hegerty

Technical Architect, AltaVista International

 

 

 

Email Address:

ian@yahoo-inc.com

 

 

Reference Type:

Professional