work

I’ve worn a few hats in the last fif­teen years. I’ve been test­ing soft­ware for over eight years now. I’m cur­rent­ly at 1–800 Con­tacts, work­ing on cre­at­ing a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. My team is ener­getic and sol­id, I like what we’re work­ing on, and I’ve been immersed in CI/CD, which is quite fun.

I sat on the board of the Asso­ci­a­tion for Soft­ware Test­ing for two years as the trea­sur­er.

I was at Anony­ome Labs, which cre­ates apps that pro­tect and enhance pri­va­cy, for a year. I was the test lead on its flag­ship prod­uct, MySu­do (iOS), as well as a com­pan­ion prod­uct for web. It was an incred­i­ble place to work.

Before Anony­ome, I worked for a finan­cial com­pa­ny that uses and devel­ops finan­cial soft­ware. They gave me my start in soft­ware test­ing, and I enjoyed work­ing on their mobile app team. My col­leagues were great, I learned tons, and I got bank hol­i­days!

I ran a start­up called Arts­Fuse, which deliv­ered art to TVs. We nev­er made it past our beta, in large part due to career changes for all three founders. We loved our idea, even as it mor­phed into dif­fer­ent forms, and I loved being able to cham­pi­on con­tem­po­rary, local artists. I ran the day-to-day oper­a­tions, test­ed the soft­ware, and worked on strate­gic part­ner­ships with artists, arts orga­ni­za­tions, and cus­tomers. And did the finan­cial stuff—blech.

Before all that, I was a lawyer. I appeared in court, but I spent most of my time behind the scenes doing research and draft­ing many many doc­u­ments. My career as a lawyer was nei­ther ful­fill­ing nor prof­itable. After prac­tic­ing in main­ly three dif­fer­ent areas of law (plus the for­ays into oth­er areas that just come with the job), I decid­ed it was­n’t the right career for me, and I left.

work-related writing outside of my blog

public appearances

lack of modesty

I asked col­leagues to write LinkedIn rec­om­men­da­tions for me, and they turned out in full force. If you’ll for­give the lack of mod­esty, here are a few of my favorites. To see all of them, my LinkedIn user­name is racheljoi.

It is incred­i­ble to work with such a knowl­edge­able soft­ware tester as Rachel. I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work togeth­er with Rachel at Anony­ome Labs. Her extent of knowl­edge in soft­ware test­ing is astound­ing. Rachel’s dri­ve to gain knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence, and bet­ter her­self sets her apart. She also has a lot of aware­ness of diver­si­ty and pro­vid­ing a soft­ware prod­uct that is open and avail­able to every­one. Rachel is amaz­ing and strives to be the best at every­thing she does.

Nicholas Cloward, devel­op­er

I’ve worked under Rachel’s lead as a mem­ber of a ven­dor team. Rachel is nice and easy going, active lis­ten­er and team play­er, very com­fort­able to work with. As a leader, she val­ues her team’s opin­ions and effort, and works hard along­side towards the com­mon goal — good-bet­ter-even bet­ter qual­i­ty. Her pas­sion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in test­ing are inspir­ing.

Iry­na Dzho­la, tester

Rachel is a quin­tes­sen­tial qual­i­ty assur­ance pro­fes­sion­al. Her thor­ough and proac­tive approach to ensur­ing a rig­or­ous lev­el of qual­i­ty with­in the soft­ware she is test­ing will be a huge asset to com­pa­ny and prod­ucts with which she engages. Rachel is a tal­ent­ed and sea­soned pre­sen­ter with­in the field of qual­i­ty assur­ance, which has the side ben­e­fit of being high­ly con­nect­ed with­in her indus­try. In sum, point her at prod­uct and watch the qual­i­ty met­rics sky­rock­et.

Jeff Poul­ton, prod­uct man­ag­er

I have a list of test­ing resources I like on Github. I wel­come pull requests! I don’t have any­thing else inter­est­ing on Github, at least for now.