Some of the engineering roles we have at Microsoft are best explained through the stories of the people who do the work day in and day out. Bing is one of the most exciting groups at Microsoft and has very strong, very dedicated Software Development Engineers in Test. This interview is to give insight into the role and to what it’s like to work on a web service at Microsoft. Check out our first Bing SDET interview here.
- Eugenia

'Softie in question: Venkat Narayanan Job title: Senior Test Manager - Bing

Describe the SDET role to our audience in 10 words or less.
Continuously find and report the release readiness of the product.

Venkat, I know you have been a part of Bing since it was known as Live Search.  Why is Bing still your passion and why the SDET role?
I will address the SDET role first. I have been in the test role for 10 years, and wouldn’t do anything else. Program Management and Development have their own attraction, but for me test offers the best of all worlds. You can be extremely creative in how you test, and what test cases you come up with. You can write code as much as you want, and when you want. To me, testers usually have the best overall view of how a product behaves.

I believe Bing is the place to be at Microsoft. We are in an extremely competitive space, but we are also investing heavily. Search is nowhere close to being done. I work in an ever-changing world with a new challenge every day. I am excited to come in to work every day to work on a new problem.

As Bing gains market share, can you share with me some of the green field/creative work you have been able to do in the field of search for Bing.com?
Bing has introduced a number of new features to the Search experience. I have worked on the Homepage (with its images), the entity experiences (entity card, search for musicians or actors and look for the top result), the left pane, and lots of new instant answers. We have done a lot of work to take search beyond the ten blue links. We have been able to experiment with multiple versions of all of these features and iteratively develop features that have most positive impact for customers.

As you perform your day to day job, do you have the opportunity to learn new things? How?
As I said in one of my previous answers, I work on problems every day. I get to learn new things – new techniques in testing (or at least techniques I did not know before), new technology, new ways of programming, new ways of thinking. We have a lot fewer people working on Search than some of our competitors. This forces us to be innovative in how we work to compete.

Ownership and Impact. Can you share with me personally what this means to you and what it means as an engineer working on Bing.com?
I get to own pretty much all of the UX for web results. Features I work on impact hundreds of millions of users, positively, I hope. With this ownership and impact comes the responsibility of doing a good job to ensure customers have the best experience possible.

Your favorite Bing commercial? Your favorite Bing homepage picture?
The new Los Links series is pretty funny. I like those commercials.

I am the test manager for the Bing Homepage. There are so many pictures, but I have to say my favorite is the first one ever. The one with hot air balloons. This is my favorite, not because it was cool, but because it was the first one we shipped. It is always great to see something you worked on ship.

As we close this up, can you share with me one thing you want the rest of the world to know about Bing that they might not already know?
I have been at Bing for 4+ years and I can’t remember a time when the entire team was this excited about our work. The team has grown a lot over the years, and what we produce amazes me at times. I am excited to go in to work every day and can’t wait to share all of the cool things we are working on right now.