We are EMBL: Rajat Bhatnagar on automating the hunt for software bugs

We are EMBL: Rajat Bhatnagar on automating the hunt for software bugs Rooted in chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes how seemingly small actions can lead to dramatically different results. Software testing has its own version of this phenomenon. A tiny mistake, such as a typo in a line of code, is sometimes all it takes to trigger a site-wide crash. Software testers anticipate potential problems by running checks that verify if a system works correctly. By using automated tools, these checks can happen repeatedly after every deployment or code change. As a Quality Assurance Automation Engineer for Europe PMC at EMBL-EBI, Rajat Bhatnagar works on implementing such tools. Since he joined EMBL-EBI over four years ago, he has improved test automation coverage, cutting system failure rates by about two-thirds. His work helps ensure that Europe PMC, an open-access repository for life sciences literature, works as intended and that users can easily find relevant information. We caught up with Rajat to learn more about test automation, the new features he’s been working on, and how rock and folk-pop covers are a perfect counterbalance to debugging. Can you tell me a little bit about your background? I studied Electronics and Communication Engineering at Chitkara University in Himachal Pradesh, India. After finishing my degree, I moved into IT because I had a keen interest in coding, building applications, and testing tools. My previous jobs had nothing to do with science. I worked at an insurance company in Southampton, UK, in automation testing and quality assurance. Later on, I started looking for opportunities in international organisations to get more global exposure; that’s what brought me to EMBL-EBI. For those who might be unfamiliar, what is automation testing? Automation testing is the process of automating the workflow of a human functional tester. The main goal is to ensure software behaves as expected and that nothing breaks before it is deployed to production – in this case this means made live on the public website. At Europe PMC, whenever we want to introduce a new feature or make changes, there’s a team that develops it and thinks about how to implement it. My team then steps in to test it and ensure it works reliably for our users. What new features or projects have you been working on recently? Europe PMC is a unique resource. It enables thousands of users worldwide to search through almost 50 million scientific publications to find the latest and most up to date information about their topic of interest, all entirely free of charge to the user. I’ve been working on the complete revamp of the Advanced Search feature on the Europe PMC website, which allows researchers to find scientific literature based on different filters. This project required close collaboration with both the development and product teams from the very beginning. Being involved early on in the development stage helped me understand how the feature should work, which meant I could prepare appropriate test scenarios in parallel. On this project, I also developed the automation framework. Once testing was complete and all the requirements were satisfied, we gave the green light, and the feature was ready to go. This was a really big project because it involved a complete restructuring of the search page. We made it much easier for specialist and non-specialist users to interact with the advanced search. I’ve also been working on moving a huge part of our infrastructure to the cloud, particularly the systems responsible for rendering full-text articles and preprints. By migrating to the cloud, we were able to gain more control and improve the performance. What do you enjoy most about working at EMBL-EBI? The variety of projects we work on. Instead of focusing on one specific project at a time, our team works on many interesting things in parallel. Another thing I like about EMBL-EBI is the diversity of people here. It was the first thing I noticed when applying for my job. I felt that working with people from all over the world would help me grow both personally and professionally, and that’s exactly what I’ve experienced since joining! What do you like to do in your spare time? I’m really into music. I play guitar and piano, and I also sing. I have a YouTube channel where I post cover songs of artists such as Ed Sheeran, Jason Mraz and Linkin Park. Besides that, I’m into gaming. I mostly play single-player third-person games such as Ghost of Tsushima or Spider-Man. Bhatnagar performing The Reason by Hoobastank at a music festival. Credit: From the personal archives of Rajat Bhatnagar. Edit