Scholastic is known for our award-winning and bestselling books and entertainment, for our Book Clubs and Fairs, for the classroom magazines and teaching resources, and for all the educational materials and support we provide to educators and school districts to help children fall in love with reading. All of that, of course, relies on strong, sophisticated technologies underpinning everything we do.
Welcome to #TechTalk with Scholastic, our series highlighting the Scholastic Software & Technology Services team—the people who work behind the scenes to build the technology and tools that help get books into the hands of children across the world.
For the next few weeks, we'll be sharing videos and interviews with members of the STS Technology Associate Program, a program that's identifying and training the next generation of leaders. Today we welcome Valerie Maldonado, Staff Quality Engineer.
What do you do all day, Valerie?
As a QE for Scholastic Book Clubs, I spend most of my days preparing for releases. This takes on a lot of different forms, whether it is creating and automating test cases or analyzing past test case results. I work closely with developers to ensure our changes will bring a positive customer experience. It also entails working with a lot of different teams so that everything runs smoothly from the moment a user logs into our site to the moment they receive their book order.
What’s the best part of your job at Scholastic?
The best part of my job is having the ability to learn new things and slowly apply them. We are constantly trying to improve our testing methods, and having the opportunity to do that and see the results is satisfying.
What’s something someone would be surprised to hear about the Technology Services team at Scholastic?
The amount of moving parts that are in STS and how well they work together. Everybody is working towards the same goal and constantly cooperating with each other to ensure the best customer experience.
Just for fun, what’s your favorite book?
I don't think I have a favorite, but one of my favorite reads is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It shows an interesting perspective of World War 2 from an unusual narrator.
Thanks, Valerie! Find out more about our STS Technology Associate Program here.
(Check out our recent profile on William Ciaurro, too!)
