Neha Shah

18 Jun 2021

This is Neha Shah, working as a Lead QA engineer at STARZPLAY, Dubai. I completed
my schooling and graduation from India.I have always been surrounded by the TV, STB,
IPTV and OTT boxes throughout my work experience.

This is Neha Shah, working as a Lead QA engineer at STARZPLAY, Dubai. I completed
my schooling and graduation from India.I have always been surrounded by the TV, STB,
IPTV and OTT boxes throughout my work experience. I started my career with Reliance
Industries Limited,India (though big name was working for the 4G project which was in
the articles and documents at the time) and got close with many key vendors of the VoD
market like Ericsson, Alcatel Lucent, Verimatrix, Viacess-Orca, ZTE etc. Then moved to
the Intel funded company(Startup again) got an opportunity to work on intel chipset
STB. Before joining Starzplay I was with a Chinese company Nationalchip and I was the
only technical support for Nationalchip products in the Indian market.(kinda startup for
me at least as I have to manage everything on my own!!). Working with the startups, my
equation says that WORK*WORK/STRESS = (FUN*FUN)+KNOWLEDGE.

Coming back to my current role in STARZPLAY, I am involved in testing the RESTAPIs
of backend microservices using RestAssured Framework for automating the test cases.
Involved in the manual testing of ETL Processes.

Also have successfully validated and released Starzplay applications for Samsung
Tizen/Orsay, Chromecast, LG and PS4 in the MENA region, which lead to a
considerable increase in the number of signups, as the app was available only for
Mobile, Tablets, and PCs before. Engaged in the POC of the automation testing tools for
Smart TVs.

The reason I choose to be in a testing field is that I believe we QA are the gatekeepers of
any organization. The quality of any product is crucial to be successful. So, QA plays an
important role to make sure the quality of the end product is not compromised.
I think if you want the understanding about any product of a company one should meet
the QA team. This thought actually motivates me to be in the testing field because I
believe QA has the best knowledge of the product no matter what organization or
domain it is.

I love to be involved in the meetup groups and share my knowledge with the
community.

● I was invited as a speaker at the Testing QA summit in Dubai. Here are my
takeaways of the event.
https://medium.com/@shahneha403/test-automation-summit-and-digital-qa-s
ummit-2018-dubai-my-takeaway-from-the-industry-experts-8e2ce298683d
● I recently spoke about Mocks and Testing microservices using rest assured and
cucumber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEmriZVPCno
● I also got an opportunity to speak about microservices over monolith
architecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjHjI_koGzU

The major challenge that I faced during my testing career is automating the tests for
Smart TVs like Samsung, LG and Playstation and especially when there are players
involved. I struggled a lot because there were not the best tools available in the market
so I started to build my own. However, I am still not there yet. There is a long way to go.

I think the best practices to follow in the QA team is to evaluate the testing efforts.
Based on that, decide if it's worth automating or manual testing is more feasible. At
times I have realized that for some one time activities it's not a good idea to spend
money, time and resources on automation if the job can be easily done manually.