We caught up with Akanksha about a month after she began her new role as a Quality Engineer in our R&D team. We spoke to her about her role, her journey and why she loves working with automation.

What does a Quality Engineer do at TSS?

As part of the Validation team, it was my role to check and validate both the quality of the logger itself as well as the data it produced. I would make sure that the data is high quality and that the individual loggers are connecting with the gateways in the right ways. TSS has a number of different systems and loggers that all work in slightly different ways, so it was my job to monitor this. I would write and execute scripts.  

In my new role in the R&D team, I am doing similar work but writing automation scripts. Essentially my job is to utilize automation to make our internal processes better.

Tell us a bit about your background?

I’m originally from India, and I have a lot of experience in working as part of digital teams. I’ve worked for gaming companies doing testing, insurance companies and educational organizations too. I had no experience of working with the pharmaceutical industry before starting at TSS, though, so that has been a big learning experience. But I have always loved a challenge and am not afraid to learn new things.  

Why did you want to make the move to working with automation?

I have been interested in automation for a long time. I find it very interesting to give a system command and watch it react. So, while I was doing this manually in the Validation team, in R&D I now write scripts to automate these processes.

"One of the things I like most about TSS is the emphasis it places on professional development. When I talked to my manager about my interest in automation, they actively started helping me look for new roles and teams that might be suitable. And when a new role opened up in R&D, I was interviewed and offered the opportunity".  

How does your work help TSS deliver industry-leading software solutions?

We are always telling our clients about the benefits of automation and removing manual processes from their workflows. Well, I do the same thing for internally. I am looking at the ways we work and interact with a team and seeing how we can optimize them through automation. Once we have identified an opportunity, I write the automation script. Hopefully the result is much more efficient workflows and dataflows, both within the company and between us and our clients.

For example, a colleague was updating an order for a client. So, they have to go into the system, find all the information, input the details and create the order. If I create a script that can eliminate this manual process, I’ve saved us a lot of time and sped up the whole ordering process significantly.  

How have you found working with the team at TSS?

A significant difference that I noticed right away when I joined TSS is just how accessible everyone is. In some companies, there is a hierarchy that stops you from communicating with senior managers and decision-makers. Here, everything is very open. So if you are working on a project and you need to run an idea past someone, you can just go and talk to them. I like that a lot – it’s much more effective than having to do everything through email.

One of the biggest personal challenges I have faced is learning Swedish. I feel like my understanding is good, but I find speaking it quite difficult. But we spoke about it during my initial interview and TSS has such an international team that I felt confident I could make it work. I soon found out that everyone on the team is amazingly helpful and supportive. People from across the company, as well as my neighbors at home, are all helping me to get better at speaking Swedish.

I love working for a company that is helping to distribute drugs and medical treatments safer for people all over the world. Especially after something as big as the Covid-19 pandemic, it really makes me feel proud to work here.  

What are your professional goals for the next year?

I just want to keep getting better and learning more skills. I find my role here really interesting, and I love the fact that I am supported and encouraged to challenge myself. I want to grow with the company. I hope to take on new responsibilities and learn how to utilize new technologies and tools to create as much value as I can. One example will be learning to understand different programming languages. In previous roles I have worked with Selenium and JavaScript, but now I am adding Cypress to that list as well.

Thanks, Akanksha!

You too. Have a great day.

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