Oliver Hazell

Senior QA Engineer with over 18 years’ experience in the software industry. A hard working, accountable, dedicated individual, with excellent communication and critical thinking skills, leadership experience, and diligence. Looking for a new role with test automation opportunities, and somewhere I can make an impact. 

Playtech Software, Ipswich (Jan 2009 – May 2025) 
 
A FTSE 250 software company (LON: PTEC), and a leading platform, content, and services provider in the online gambling industry. Initially joined Gaming Technology Solutions, a leading global supplier of gaming solutions, which Playtech acquired in 2009. Worked within the following divisions: 

 
09/2024 – 05/2025 Senior SQA Engineer, Genbet, (internal move then left after skeleton crew tasks completed) 

• A dual role across two departments. Existing role on a skeleton crew, plus new role within an international QA team for the wider Playtech Sports transaction and bonus platform. New role involved daily scrums, transaction API testing, new features testing, and regression testing. 
• The division director chose me to stay on to be on a small team to maintain the VS product on a skeleton crew basis for 1 year following group consultation and I was technical lead for customer support and product maintenance and operations. My role was critical to maintaining the product revenue stream after the office closed. 
• Led an extremely complicated platform release in my final month, for which both the QA manager and my QA team lead praised my work and professionalism. The subsequent postmortem analysis, where I presented root cause analysis of support issues to the department was highly praised. 
• Led product releases with critical fixes while on skeleton crew, managing my time between two roles. Took over from the delivery manager responsibilities after they left in November. 

01/2023 – 08/2024 QA Team Lead, Genbet, (restructuring)  

• Led the QA and release of a major new product type with forty versions, compatibility requirements for all major browser/ tablet/ mobile types, thirty-three languages, and thirty currencies. Translated and completed localisation testing on over 10,000 phrases, as well as configuring all currencies. This was a major undertaking. 
• Chosen as group representative after office closure announced and represented the department during consultation. 
• Represented the department during certifications and led the divisions efforts on this. 
• OWASP Security Champion for the product and main point of contact for the companies Security Operations Centre. 
• Successfully analysed an ongoing production issue to find the root cause based on weeks of analysis and received praise from the delivery and development managers for analysis and presentation of findings. 
• Received a one-off bonus for my work as hiring manager for a new QA role, and in taking on and training the new team member. 

 
05/2022 – 12/2022 QA Team Lead, Virtual Sports (VS), (promotion) 

• Responsibility for QA sign off, managing day to day QA tasks, writing the platform test cases, and out of hours support. 
• Found complicated, non-obvious platform bugs through analysis and determination, and persuading my case to convince the development manager of the issues. My work in finding the root cause allowed these issues to be fixed and had a major improvement on performance. 
• My performance in leading the QA team since 09/2020, not being afraid to argue my case, my perseverance in finding platform issues, out of hours support efforts, and being a good collaborator all led to my promotion to this role. 
   

05/2015 – 05/2022 QA Engineer, Virtual Sports (VS), (restructuring) 

• Acting QA team lead since 09/2020, team of four. Joint hiring manager for new QA starters and responsible for their training and appraisals. 
• Helped make Virtual Sports the most profitable division during lockdown, by keeping the product supported and maintained, dealing with system crashes, and working with the new delivery manager to meet aggressive release deadlines during this period. This often involved working during unsociable hours. Delivery and development manager asked me to do this due to my knowledge of the product and abilities in maintaining it and setting it up. 
• Functional and non-functional testing, mobile device testing, load testing and performance monitoring. 
• Installing and configuring mini-PCs for retail shops. 
• Creating test plans and running tests. Creating test basis, user stories, and accessing quality attributes. 
• Testing new Virtual Sports and associated markets and customer integrations. 
• Out of hours customer support. 
• Wrote a multithreaded load testing tool in Java using CountDownLatch class to assess latency on the retail service. 
• Mock API testing with SOAP UI. 

10/2014 – 04/2015 Senior QA Engineer, Virtue Fusion (VF), (a sub-divison of GTS). 

• Regression testing, white/black box testing, boundary testing, user stories, use case scenarios. 
• Debugging in Eclipse, analysing issues and providing steps to reproduce bugs. 
• Testing interfaces between different systems, analysing flows using sequence diagrams. 
• Automated API regression testing of the platform with SOAP UI. 

03/2013 – 09/2014 QA Engineer, GTS, Dev team (restructuring) 

• Writing unit tests in JUnit and creating manual test cases with steps, expected outcomes, and results. 
• Ensuring correct functionality of high stakes features such as jackpot payouts. 
• Ensuring correct integration with third party systems, including error handling and edge cases. 

01/2009 – 03/2013 Test Engineer, Gaming Technology Solutions (GTS), QA team 

• Joining a small startup of twenty people, in an agile development environment, I made an impact by being the only Platform QA engineer, and thus responsible for QA of all platform releases and integrations.  
• New features testing, regression testing, user acceptance testing, integration testing, security testing. 
• Analysing log files, writing test plans, executing test cases, collaborating with developers. 

SecureAccount.net Ltd, Colchester (Jan 2007 – Dec 2008) 

A small startup in digital content management, distribution and payment space, providing an advanced online payment facility for digital merchants. 

02/2008 – 11/2008 QA Analyst (internal move to fill a QA position, left after company became insolvent). 

• Functional and non-functional QA of the system, user acceptance testing, load testing and reports, tracking bugs. 
• Showed the limitations of the product and as a result we developed a queueing system for ticket purchases under heavy website traffic, which was a new concept at the time. 

02/2007 – 02/2008 Junior Developer 

• Java developer in a small startup of ten, web-based ticket and payment system, ticket service provider for Cambridge Folk Festival. 

RE Austin Ltd, Colchester  

Administrator, (summer 2004 and 2005) 

• Pre-employment screening and background checks, managing files, communication, producing final reports. Summer work whilst at Essex University. 

Pyramid Recruitment / GBN, Colchester  
Agency worker (2001 – 2007) 

• Manual and office-based part time contracts. 

AMEC/McAlpine Construction, nr. Gravesend, Kent (summer 1999) 
Lab technician (summer 1999) 

• Channel Tunnel Rail Link project. Taking soil samples to the lab and running tests. Lived onsite for 6 weeks. Summer work whilst at Manchester University. 

University of Essex – (Oct 2003 - Jul 2006) 

BSc (Hons) Computer Science (Software Engineering) 

Grade obtained: Class I 

Computer Science degree with emphasis on software engineering and different stages of the software development life cycle.  

• Awarded a Distinction (78%) in the first year whilst working an evening job, and 92% in the second-year software engineering group project as team leader.  
• The individual final year project achieved a First and involved creating a software engineering report, presentation and challenging Java / SQL distributed application based on requirements from a local business.  
• The courses included: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Mathematics, Object Oriented Programming, Embedded Systems and Microcontrollers, Relational Databases, Middleware, Java, C++, Software Engineering. 

Other Higher Education 

• 2003 City and Guilds Visual Basic Programming Level 2, Colchester Institute  
• 2002 Polish Intermediate Language Course, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland 
• 1998-2001 BEng (Hons) Aerospace Engineering, Manchester University, (yrs. 1&2) 
  - 2:2 in the first year, and completed modules included Structures, Mathematics, Aerodynamics, Mechanics, Control Systems, Technical Drawing and CAD, Materials, Laboratory, and second year Aircraft Design Group Project, which I led.

Secondary Education 

St John Payne RC School, Chelmsford, Essex (1991-1998) 

3 A levels (1998) Physics (A), Maths (B), Chemistry (C). 

9 GCSEs (1996) Technology (A), Double Science (AA), History (A), English Language (B), English Literature (B), Art (B), Religious Education (B), Maths (B). 

Awards Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award, Yr 12 Chemistry Prize, achieved the highest Technology project mark, British Aerospace offered me a sponsorship after passing the interviews.