Quality Assurance High School
Resume:
TYLER WILLIAM BOYD
*******@*****.***
EDUCATION
- High School Diploma, Ashbrook High School, Gastonia, North Carolina,
United States. Received May 2003.
- Bachelors of Science in Psychology, with a minor in Computer Science;
Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, United States. Received December
2007.
Courses in Computer Science:
- Data Structures (Java)
- Intro to Web Programming (PHP, MySQL, Javascript)
- Computer Organization
- Special Topics (Serious Games) (Adobe Flex, ActionScript)
WORK EXPERIENCE
- 2006-2007. Research Assistant, Gordon Psychometric Lab, Chapel Hill,
NC, United States.
Duties and responsibilities:
- Perform eye-tracking experiments on participants.
- Carry out other duties related to experiment support.
Accomplishments:
- Developed a new program to parse raw eye-tracker output into series
of "fixations" and "saccades"
- Researched existing algorithms online and selected one for the
program
- Learned Perl from O'Reilly books and implemented algorithm in
Perl
- 2008-2011. Junior Developer, Futures, Inc. in Durham, NC, United
States.
Duties and responsibilities:
- Implement user interface designs from static or dynamic mockups.
Including:
- HTML and CSS
- Dojo and jQuery Javascript frameworks
- Asynchronous calls to the server using the REST protocol
- Cross-browser compatibility (Firefox and Internet Explorer)
- Develop backend features based on written requirements.
Including:
- Ruby on Rails
- Custom SQL queries
- Unit tests with RSpec and behavioral tests with Cucumber and
Selenium
- Maintain a shared codebase with a small team of developers
Including:
- Version control using Git and Subversion
- Pair programming and scrum experience
- Iterative development using Pivotal Tracker
- Troubleshoot and prepare bug reports
Including:
- Troubleshooting the product with non-technical staff and users
- Preparing full bug reports including screenshots and steps to
recreate the issue
- Running performance tests and database queries using the UNIX
shell.
- Quality assurance and usability projects
Including:
- Traveling off-site to conduct a usability test at the ConAgra
plant
- Managing off-shore teams of 1-3 people, turning output into
usable bug reports
Accomplishments:
- Developed and maintained an online job board using Ruby on Rails
with a team of other developers. It is found at www.pipelinenc.com.
- Assumed a Quality Assurance Lead role in the company in June 2010.
Organized existing QA procedures into a weekly and monthly cycle.
SIDE PROJECTS
Here are some work samples in Ruby. These are hosted on GitHub:
http://github.com/tb0yd
- hydroponics: An web-based interface for load-testing Rails
applications which can populate a MySQL table with fake data at about
10,000 rows per minute. It automatically loads the SQL database
configuration based on the config.yml for the target app. It uses the
Sinatra and Sequel Ruby libraries and the jQuery Javascript library
with CoffeeScript. It is functional, but unfinished.
- quick_nav: A fast HTML navigation menu generator for Rails. Features
an easy-to-use DSL which is fully unit-tested.
PROBLEM-SOLVING NARRATIVE
Our site hosted some statistics about universities and colleges, and
after taking on the QA Lead role, I discovered that a certain value for one
of our models wasn't quite matching up with reality. The "Number of
Students" value just always seemed lower than it should be.
We had received the data from a third party, so I figured the source
probably wasn't to blame. So we must have been corrupting the data somehow.
I began scouring the Rails code for the name of the relevant column.
When nothing showed up, I got the feeling that the problem might be
in that 1,000-line, uncommented, untested Ruby script consisting of only
SQL commands fed into ActiveRecord line by line. So after reading
definitions for temp table after temp table, I saw that the column was
eventually defined as VARCHAR(4), so every value in that column had been
truncated at 4 digits. Case closed.
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