Neil Higgins Email & Phone Number

Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom

Senior Test Analyst providing quality assurance for the Umbraco websites supported by the Online Marketing Team.Achievements:• Migrating an unsupported Auctions (housing property) website from Umbraco 7 to an Umbraco 13 platform, enabling the business to easily update the functionality and content of their site without risking availability.• Extensive testing of vital new APIs required to support the data underpinning the new Auctions website.Core Responsibilities:• Working alongside the Product Owner, Front-end and Back-end Developers to write Acceptance Criteria for all User Stories.• Creating Gherkin based manual regression test cases from User Story Acceptance Criteria; these test cases were used to provide documentation for the website under test.• Writing and maintaining automated test cases using SpecFlow, Selenium and C#.• Supporting and identifying improvements for our in-house C# Automation framework.• Performing all Test Automation code reviews.• Accessibility Testing using Wave, to ensure our websites are as useable and accessible as possible for our visually impaired users.• Mentoring other team members and sharing Test Automation best practices.• Working with Development and other Business areas towards defect resolution.• Raising and implementing Change Requests through the Change Management system

Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom

Test Analyst supporting the development of the Countrywide & Connells Group corporate websites.Achievements:• Re-hosting several Countrywide/Connells websites from Episerver to Umbraco; resulting in significant cost savings for the business.• Working alongside the Lead Developer to produce a template Selenium C# Automation Framework for all areas of the business to use. Core Responsibilities:• Working as part of an Agile team using Kanban.• Scripting and performing manual tests cases based on acceptance criteria of user stories.• Writing feature files and all C# code for automated test cases using Specflow, Selenium and C#.• Performing code reviews of all test automation code.• Manual API Testing of using Postman, as well as creating sharable/reusable Postman collections for targeted regression testing.• Working with Development and other Business areas towards defect resolution.• Providing “Show and tell” demos to key stakeholders, in order to obtain business sign off for newly developed features.

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

Automated Test Analyst providing quality assurance for an Episerver content management system hosting over 50 Estate Agency websites.Achievements:• Testing from the ground up of a major website replacement project which migrated over 50 individual estate agency websites to a shared Episerver Content Management System, achieving significant cost savings. • Scripting and maintaining approx. 1,200 automated regression tests using CucumberJS, Selenium, Specflow and C#.• JMeter Performance testing of some key APIs.Current Responsibilities• Working as part of an Agile scrum team.• Scripting of manual tests cases for new website functionality based on acceptance criteria of user stories.• Manual API Testing of using Postman.• Writing Gherkin Feature files and their associated step definitions; integrating automated test scripts with our CucumberJS and Selenium C# frameworks.• Code review of Test automation scripts held in a central Git repository.• Working with Development and other Business areas towards defect resolution.• Providing “Show and tell” demos to key stakeholders, in order to obtain business sign off for newly developed features.• Performance Testing of key APIs using JMeter.

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

Test Analyst for one of the largest academic institutions in the UK, consisting of around 200,000 students, 6,000 tutors and 4,600 full-time academic and support staff. Achievements:• Production of an Automation Test Strategy following a comprehensive review of existing processes and procedures.• Production and initial implementation of a Performance Test Strategy for critical applications.Current Responsibilities• Performance Test scripting using Apache Jmeter or HP Loadrunner 12.5 (Siebel & HTTP Protocols)• Plan, co-ordinate & implement Performance Test scenarios agreed with Product Owners • Working with Development and other Business areas towards Performance defect resolution• First point of contact for Test Automation initiatives• Functional Testing of internal and external web based applications• Accessibility Testing of Student facing websites• Testing of SOA services using SoapUII am currently upskilling myself in the following technologies in order to implement automated regression tests: SpecFlow, Gherkin, Selenium Webdriver and C#.

Aylesbury

Senior Test Analyst for a life and pensions company with 400,000 policyholders and £8bn of funds under management. Responsible for organising and implementing risk based testing of the Society’s applications on a quarterly release basis.Achievements:• Heavily involved in the testing of a new Box Management system, bringing the management of unit-linked business back in-house from Lloyds Banking Group (LBG). End to End testing covered SAT, in-house BAT and joint BAT testing with Test counterparts from State Street, Aberdeen Asset Management and LBG. • Mentoring inexperience business-based acceptance testers and facilitating phased testing of a large scale IT re-hosting project.• Implementing business critical rate changes to all IT systems without error • Reduced business cost through the use/reuse of new and existing test automation Core Responsibilities:• Identify and implement automated regression tests using Quick Test Professional • Quality Center project customisation, workflow amendments and server patch updates • Ensuring business critical rate updates are applied accurately and on-time • Applying risk based testing approach to business documents to establish requirements• Producing Test Strategies and Test Cases after consultation with stakeholders• Ensuring test preparation and execution is completed within budget, on time ensuring quality assurance targets are met at all times• Working with Development teams and other Business areas towards defect resolution• Identification and implementation of improved ways of operating to reduce costs• Assisting colleagues and peers through mentoring and one to one training sessions

Aylesbury

Identifying, developing, executing and maintaining automated regression packs for a number of different companies (Clerical Medical, Halifax Bank and Scottish Widows) within the Banking Group. The role involved working with colleagues based across multiple UK sites as well as our off-shore partners HCL. Achievements• Over £50,000 savings achieved for 2011 calendar year through use of automation• Instrumental in delivering an off-shore model for test automation, mentoring HCL Test Analysts in how to utilise existing test scripts and coding standards• Owned a department wide intranet site which gained on average 1500 hits a monthCore Responsibilities:• Identifying core business processes for automation in conjunction with business users • Proof of concepts, estimates and Return of Investment projections• Developing and maintaining Terminal Emulator, Web, VisualAge Smalltalk and .Net QTP scripts• Using automated test packs to health-check environments following weekly code deployments• Delivering interactive demonstrations to multiple teams; to raise the awareness of automation • Quality Center 9.0 Project customisation and general administration

Aylesbury

Core Responsibilities:• Performing Proof of concepts, documenting findings and making recommendations • Developing, executing and maintaining QTP scripts• Assisting Performance Test team to produce and run Loadrunner 7.8 scripts during busy periods

Aylesbury`

Core Responsibilities:• Recording Loadrunner scripts using VUGen 7.8• Building and running scenarios using the load controller• Analysing results and reporting to project stakeholders