Making the Career Transition from Software Testing to Data Science

A decade ago Microsoft had over twelve thousand full-time testers, and when you added up all the contract and outsourced testers too, there were more software test engineers than developers. The test automation solutions alone had more than a hundred million lines of code. However, that process was built for a company that would release a new version of a monopoly-scale product once every three years and ship it on a CD. That world had already begun to change, and Microsoft was missing the boat. When Microsoft tester Ken Johnston first encountered agile development and DevOps, he realized his vision of testing needed to change—and so did he. Ken set out on the path of big data, and that led his to his new career in data science. Testers have always been the masters of product quality data, and now with connected services and telemetry, there is more data than ever. Ken believes every tester has the potential to become a data scientist. Learn how he made the transition and how you can do the same!