It’s a scenario that can give any researcher the cold sweats: an eleventh-hour crash of a program just minutes before a paper deadline. Luckily, thanks to the efforts of our Quality Assurance and Support team, Mendeley strives hard to ensure this never happens. While our developers put their all into designing a great product, Quality Assurance are there to ensure we’ve written tests to cover all the edge cases, and that we don’t let those pesky bugs into the wild.

And what if things do go wrong? Support is there to iron out any wrinkles, whether it be from a new user still trying to learn the ropes, an expert submitting a bug report, or fielding requests from users to hand off to our developers.

Callum Anderson

Team Lead

Callum’s worked in technology for a few years now, both as a Business Analyst, and in QA. He grew up in St. Albans (just outside London) and holds degrees in English and Computer Science.

How do you describe your role at Mendeley?

I’m lucky enough to be involved in a lot of different projects, so it’s unlikely I’ll be doing the same thing from one day to the next. I could be in meetings planning features and implementation for a new product or service, or at my desk all day writing ruby— I love that variety.

What’s your favourite part of working at Mendeley?

We get to work with the latest technologies and some of the best brains in the industry.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I am into running and triathlons – I’m actually competing in the UK Ironman triathlon later this year, so training for that is taking up quite a bit of my spare time. I also try spend a few hours each week reading about or playing with new technologies.

Michał Buś

Senior QA Engineer

Michał was born and grew up in Kraków, Poland. where he studied sociology at Jagiellonian University, before moving to Edinburgh, and then London.
Following a string of varied roles, he found his interest for testing software after joining Last.fm, a music startup, in a diverse ‘resident Polish person’ role that involved anything from translation and copy-editing to liaising with music labels and festival organisers. He joined Mendeley nearly 5 years ago and has enjoyed helping it grow into what it is today, being kept busy/interested ever since. Follow him @michalboo

How do you describe your role at Mendeley?

Test all the things, as early as possible. I’m particularly interested in doing as much as I can to help Mendeley build software that people will actually use. Also: investigating, finding, documenting and helping to fix bugs (Reported bug count at the time of writing: 1,092)

What is your favourite part about working for Mendeley?

Some of the people are nice enough, I guess. (Editor’s note: Michał’s deadpan humor…we hope!) I also enjoy being able to get involved in a wide variety of projects, testing different products in different ways. Consistently learning new things and being kept on my toes.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

Going to a lot of gigs – before joining Mendeley, I worked on promoting live music in Kraków and Warsaw with my brother and some friends, and now use living in London as an opportunity to help them out and ‘talent scout’ by seeing and hearing as many new acts as my ears can take. My other interests include: playing basketball, flâneuring around London, reading books, lahmacun and setting up ephemeral ‘projects’ on tumblr.

Josh Cole

Technical Support Representative

Josh studied mathematics at the University of York, but decided that 3 years of maths was more than enough, so he moved into Technical Support. He said he came to Mendeley for a new challenge and to make my mark in an up and coming startup.

 

How do you describe your role at Mendeley?

I deal with customer questions and issues with the various Mendeley products (Mendeley Desktop, Web, the app, etc), as well as escalating recurring problems/features with our various Development Teams.

What is your favourite part about working for Mendeley?

I love working in a constantly evolving work environment that supports learning and development.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I enjoy playing video games on my Xbox 360, as well as Starcraft and watching good films or really, really bad films. I’ve also recently discovered badminton, which I’m awful at, but I love anyway.

 

 

Veronica Mejias Meneses

QA Engineer

Veronica studied Computer Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile. She moved to the UK 5 years ago and landed in Mendeley, where her career took a turn in the right direction.

How do you describe your role at Mendeley?

I test the software. Over and over. My main job is to write automated tests to make sure new features don’t break old ones. I also been working on our testing infrastructure lately, to help us moving onto a more reliable, faster platform.

What is your favourite part about working for Mendeley?

At Mendeley there is constant challenge, constant learning. I work with a very nice and talented team, and the rest of my colleagues are really nice to work with too.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

In my spare time I enjoy talking to my family, baking, crochet, reading, travelling, cycling, swimming, watching Qi, among many other things.

 

Tiago Lourenço Nobre

QA Automation Engineer

Tiago went to Uni near his hometown in Leiria, Portugal at Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Leiria, where he studied computer engineering. He worked at PT Inovação a telecommunication group in Aveiro as a automation tester in a continuous integration environment before he came to Mendeley.

How do you describe your role at Mendeley?

At the moment, I am working on automation tests and building, along with my team, a continuous integration & delivery. Also, importantly, I am learning new things everyday.

What is your favourite part about working for Mendeley?

Every day is a learning day and I have the opportunity to work with new technologies.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

Cycling, not riding the tube, cooking, play tennis

 

Charlotte Organ

Customer support representative

Charlotte’s another member of the south London massive together with Paul and Mudi. She went to university in Durham (the English one, not the one in NC) where she studied Modern Foreign Languages (mostly French and Arabic). A former resident of Damascus and Cairo, she trailed her spouse down to London in search of work. Mendeley was her first interview four days after she moved, and she started four days after that.

 

How do you describe your role at Mendeley?

I help people who have problems with Mendeley, have found issues or bugs that need fixing, or are finding it all a bit too much. Together with Josh, we are the last line of defence against angry users everywhere (it doesn’t always work, sadly).

What is your favourite part about working for Mendeley?

Helping people who are working on loads of different projects all over the world, from surgeons to people studying fish to medieval historians.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

Cooking, eating, reading anything that comes near me, finding and observing strange local wildlife (terrapins in the Regent’s canal is the most recent)

 

Ben A’Lee

System Administrator

Ben did a degree in computing and software development at the University of Plymouth. Then when he finished, he wanted to move to London (“Plymouth’s a nice place but not exactly conveniently located,” he said.) Ben applied for a position as a PHP developer but within a couple of months he was increasingly spending his time on sysadmin projects. Follow him @bma

How do you describe your role at Mendeley?

I’m working on things that cross over between QA and operations, primarily the monitoring infrastructure but also things related to infrastructure automation, like automatic rollbacks.

What is your favourite part about working for Mendeley?

I like the flexibility to work on different things: first PHP, then system administration, and now increasingly Ruby development.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

Reading, walking, cooking, plotting the downfall of the capitalist system.