QA People Are Developers Too: Striving for an Overall Better Development Experience Beyond the Quality of the Product—Why I Work Here (Rina Fukuda)

Hi, I am Rina Fukuda (@____rina____), a QA engineering manager for Mercari Hallo.

I used to be a test engineer at a local company in Fukuoka. I joined Mercari in 2018 as a QA engineer, when the Fukuoka development office was being established. I usually work remotely from Fukuoka and visit the Tokyo office from time to time. I vividly remember my first business trip to the Tokyo office. Roppongi Hills seemed so shiny and sparkly, and it was a wholly new experience working among so many English speakers. It all left a very deep impression.

Joining Mercari for the establishment of the Fukuoka development office

I actually wanted to work at Mercari long before there ever was a Fukuoka office. Through the Mercan articles I had read, I imagined a workplace where everyone, regardless of their individual roles, would strive toward the same objective. That was the kind of workplace I wanted to be in too.

Once I joined, I was involved in various projects across the company as a QA engineer, such as the project for increasing the maximum number of listing images to 10 and the development of pages for the CS Tool. I transferred to Souzoh in 2021, where I doubled as a QA engineer and a Scrum master for the establishment of Mercari Shops. I joined the Work Team in 2023 and have been there since. Again, I was involved in the launch of Mercari Hallo, and now I work as an engineering manager.

Looking back at my career at Mercari, I see that I’ve been involved in ground-up projects once every 2–3 years, between the establishment of the Fukuoka office, Mercari Shops, and Mercari Hallo. All of these transfers were of my own volition.

I don’t have a particular fixation with “establishing” things though. It’s just that every 2–3 years I feel like putting myself in a new environment. I am in my sixth year now, and I have been able to continuously take on new challenges throughout that time. I won’t say that it was easy. (laughs)

QA to improve development experience beyond product quality

 My current team, Work QA, has members of various employment types, such as full-time employees, vendors, and contractors. Team members live in different regions across Japan, which means most of our communication happens online.

The Work QA Team is responsible for assuring the quality of the Mercari Hallo product. We call it a “QA team,” but our stance is that we are a group of developers tasked with QA work.

Before the launch of Mercari Hallo, we were approaching our projects from the perspective of improving development safety so that the service can be delivered faster, in addition to assuring the quality of the product. We took on some initiatives such as creating a development dashboard for the Work Team and mechanisms to make sure test requests did not pile up all at once. The Work QA Team also regularly organized product feedback meetings for all members of the Work Team to join. This allowed all members to take on building the structure of the service together.

As the Work QA Team, our primary focus for the past few months was to launch the Mercari Hallo service. From here on, we will work to assure the regular, speedy, and safe delivery of new features.

We will need to improve upon development policies and implement end-to-end UI testing and automated testing for APIs. We need to proactively support non-developers with the issues they may face and build a QA team that can lead all Work members on improving product quality together. This is our true mission.

Six years in Mercari: a history of changes and why I continue to look for new challenges and environments

When I received the request from the Mercan editorial team to write this article, I decided to give it my all. I fit the bill for multiple minority groups, so I thought I would be able to provide something that can be a reference point for someone out there.

Women engineers are still a minority group in the tech industry, and QA engineering is a relatively niche profession in the market. I am also in the minority of people who work fully remote from the countryside. I hope that my activities outside of the company for software testing can also serve as reference.

I have been bad at career planning for a long time. While that largely hasn’t changed, I now have one goal: to become able to work remotely from anywhere in the world. To that end, the first step is to be adept in English.

I have a daughter. When she is old enough to enter university, I want her to have the option of studying overseas. Not only that, I also want to have the liberty to go along with her and work from wherever she is. Recently I’ve been feeling like I am getting closer and closer to achieving my goal. The issues I’m currently facing are that I need English education… and that my daughter would probably like to live by herself if she gets to go overseas. I’ve since reconsidered some parts of the goal.

It has been five years since I joined Mercari in 2018. As explained above, I never stayed in the same situation for long. Not only have I been changing teams every few years, I also continuously take on new challenges on a daily basis. To be honest, I was never interested in “career growth.” I just was lucky enough to find a fun job that excites me every day, and I wish to keep the excitement going.

Mercari Hallo is looking for QA engineers!

Finally, let me add that we are recruiting QA engineers for Mercari Hallo!

QA engineers have a wide area of responsibilities in the Work Team. We are looking for more members to lead and contribute to quality assurance while also utilizing their strengths as QA engineers.

If you have a strong desire to create an environment to make development work easier, faster, safer, and more fun while leveraging your skills, let’s have a casual chat about it! The Work QA Team will continue to drive progress!

QA Engineer – Mercari/HR領域新規事業 (Mercari Hallo)