Sergey Pavlov, Head of the Capital Markets Division

Sergey Pavlov, Head of the Capital Markets division at Exactpro, talks about how, being an expert in your field, you can have a transformative impact on the surrounding environment, be a valuable resource and an all around success. 

– I started my career in software testing in January 2010, being in my 5th year at MIPT (NRU). A year after that, I got introduced to Exactpro. At the time, there were about 70 people working in the company, and I saw that the company could grow, and I could grow with it. And that is exactly how it happened. I am still grateful to Pavel Medvedev and Lida Sinitsina for the recommendation, and to Iosif – for the trust and the opportunity he gave me.

I joined the project focused on migrating a large European exchange to a new trading platform as a Senior QA. Six months later, in the spring of 2012, I went on my first business trip to work alongside our clients. Back then, my written English was decent, but it was hard to keep up with a real-life conversation, especially on topics unrelated to my job. Over one lunch with clients, I was frantically trying to phrase my thought properly, but by the time I did, they had moved on to a different topic. Anyway, the business trip was a success. Many more followed it, and, fairly quickly, I was talking fluently about non-business-related topics as well.

After switching to the new platform, it became clear that there would be further projects aimed at improving the exchange and adding more functionality. Soon, I took charge of the project and recruited my own team. 

I performed all the functions that were necessary for the project – I estimated the testing time, created roadmaps, communicated them to clients, allocated tasks to the team, analyzed new requirements, wrote test scenarios and automated tests, performed and analyzed regression tests, logged bugs and kept the environment up and running. Pretty soon I realized that one cannot conquer alone – if I wanted to deliver projects successfully without burning out, I had to spend a significant amount of effort training my team, so that they could grow faster and take over some tasks entirely. Fortunately, I have always enjoyed training people. I'm very happy to have contributed to the training of people who went on to become lead specialists and managers at Exactpro.

After a few years, it became obvious to me that the work would be more efficient if several teams testing the same platform for different clients exchanged best practices and worked more closely together. By regularly discussing this idea with the heads of those teams, we managed to find the structure and format of the new "consolidated" team, which we launched in 2016. In 2020, the same idea resulted in the formation of the Capital Markets division which I am now the head of.

I’ve always liked and still like many aspects of my work (besides, it seems to me that I am pretty good at them :)) But, unfortunately, I don't have time for everything, so I have to focus on the main thing – organizing the activities to make the best of each person's abilities. Besides, these activities should bring them the highest satisfaction and would provide conditions for professional and career growth, as well as allow for the implementation of new processes and approaches, and the technological solutions corresponding to them.

Work aside, I spend my free time with my family – my wife and my two sons – who always crave for my attention. When we have an opportunity, my wife and I play board games with our friends or get outdoors. Occasionally, we get to play chess or watch sports and cybersports match reviews. I was keen on river trips before my kids were born, and I hope to get back to it when they’re a bit older :)