Quality Engineer / Developer Advocate Review

I completed two rotations whilst at Capital One, each lasting six months.
The first role was as a Quality Engineer in a Mobile team. This involved planning, writing, and running various test types, to ensure that the mobile app was fit for purpose.
The second position was as a Developer Advocate. This consisted of working on several projects that remove roadblocks for the wider development team. A large part of this work was networking across the business while overseeing the creation of an Engineering Handbook to aid new and existing coworkers.

Yes, particuarly in my second rotation. I took on a lot of the organising and overseeing of the Engineering Handbook project, and my team seemed more than happy for me to do this.

I learned many new skills and further developed others. These included:
- Software languages: Kotlin, Swift, React
- Testing frameworks such as Cypress
- Working in an Agile way

Plenty. I had a mentor for each rotation, and they were there to guide me in the day-to-day work. I also had a buddy at the beginning who was available for more general help and advice. Both of my teams were also incredibly supportive and they made the entire placement year a breeze!

Exceptional atmosphere within teams, but the upper management (also the US head office) leave some things to be desired. There's a fair amount of negativity around the recent changes to the hybrid work policy. Employees and teams were trusted to manage their own weekly schedules, but there's now a lot of box ticking to get everyone in the office, regardless of whether this is beneficial for the company or the employees. Upper management are ignoring the complaints which does not hekp morale.

I loved my time at Cap1 and most of this was due to the other people there. Almost all of them were absolutely fantastic and I feel proud to have worked with them!

Yes