Myself Mahesh, a Software Engineer by profession for 10 years.
It’s been a joyous ride all along, with many learning and few shortcoming. I am based out of Bangalore who love to spend time with family and friends, when off work.
Who is a Service Virtualization Engineer?
Service Virtualization Engineer is a technology specialist who understands the constraints faced by the Development and Testing teams and builds highly reliable and near to real systems, which helps them to overcome system unavailability, test data management, setup cost and operation cost.
He is one who understands and mimics actual system’s data and behaviour characteristics.
Note: What is service virtualization?
What motivated you to become a Service Virtualization Engineer?
It’s luck by chance. I wanted to be a Doctor but ended by becoming an Engineer.
While opting Engineering dreamt of flourishing in Telecommunication field, which interests me even today. However, the IT boom in India dictated something else.
At the start of my career, I was performing Webservice testing using freeware tools, during our daily activities, many a times we couldn’t cover all the scenarios due to End system unavailability, test data issue, user access issue and so on, this always pricked me.
As a tester I always take the responsibility of success or failure of a project. We are paid to deliver the best for the best, however due to various issues, achieving 100 coverage was an uphill task.
This prompted me to upskill myself and learn Service Virtualization, now I do consulting and help teams to beat their velocity and build better products in less time.
What are your specific activities as a Lead Service Virtualization Engineer?
I work for a top service line MNC in India as Lead Service Virtualization engineer.
Follow in are my core responsibilities:
- Conduct sessions with the affected teams
- Analyses system constraints
- Design and present solutions
- Develop and implement solutions
- Mentor junior members of the team and within the practice
- Write blogs on new findings and technology advancements
- Conduct training sessions
What steps did you take to land in your present job?
- Learnt a scripting language.
- Understood complex system architectures.
- Mastered XML and middleware technologies.
- Questioned on How, Who and What.
What do you wish you knew before you started preparing for this career?
Wish I started practicing it much before. Today the trend is changing. Therefore, it’s Big Data and Business intelligence and analytics.
What do you advice to your younger self?
Think from the Actual system’s view, as we build stubs of the end systems.
What do you love about your current role?
Technical knowledge, future demand and package as it is a news skill set.
What are the challenges you face in your career?
Limited support, as every company has a hand few of resources with this skill set, most often have to explore and design our own solutions.
How are you different from a Software Engineer?
I enable the software engineers to perform their daily task of development or testing.
Can you please summarise your career journey?
- Started as a fresher in 2008 for one of the top 3 Indian MNC, worked for a large Indian Telecom operator and UK insurance company.
- Certified IBM SOA Associate -664 in 2009.
- 2010 first shift to a top Canadian based IT company working for a large Banking Client.
- 2013 second shift to a mid size UK based company and worked for a mPOS (mobile point of sale) client.
- Started on practicing service Virtualization from 2014 after my third shift to a large Indian IT company.
- 2017 my fourth shift to another Indian IT giant and the saga continues.
Future Aspiration – To become a RPA(Robotics Process Automation) solution designer.
How do you like to spend your free time?
I am a big movie buff, mostly watch anything and everything which is appealing.
What sort of experiences helped prepare you most?
Self learning is the best companion.
IT landscape is over populated and no one has time to spare for others.
What are the skills required to be a Service Virtualization Engineer in 2020?
It’s difficult to be precise, we need to be across all the technology changes from Legacy to Modern Microservices Architectures.
I am 17 and I am planning for a similar career path like yours. What advice you have for me?
- Develop analytic skill set
- Ask questions no matter how silly it may seem
- Approach the problem logically
- Be good at at least in one scripting language
What are some alternate career options for a Software Engineer?
- RPA developer
- Data Scientist
- BI analyst (Business Intelligence)
What do you think potential recruiters look for in a fresh Software Engineer?
First and foremost is confidence and then the analytical and logical skill set.
Who do you think should take up this Career choice?
If you are a person who is interested in either developing something new and useful by coding or one who is interested in validating a build program, then this career option with be pleasing to you.
What do you think everyone leaving higher secondary school should know especially those who want to be in Software Testing?
Learn a language and develop analytical and logical thinking.
Any final thoughts?
Known is a drop and unknown is an Ocean.
Thanks for reading! 🙂 If you enjoyed this article, leaving your comment below would mean a lot to me and it helps other people see the story.
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