Bret Pettichord
Austin, Texas, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBret Pettichord is a software testing expert and leader with 21 years of experience building and scaling automated testing frameworks for web and enterprise software. He led development of the Watir open-source browser automation project and contributed to Selenium, helping shape the tools many teams still rely on for browser-driven test automation. A co-author of the widely read book Lessons Learned in Software Testing and a prolific conference speaker and workshop host, he blends hands-on Ruby development with pragmatic agile coaching and test-team mentoring. His career spans senior roles from consultancy to Test Architect and Software Quality Architect at companies like ThoughtWorks, HomeAway, and Blackbaud, and he has trained hundreds of practitioners in practical, homegrown automation techniques. An early adopter of integrating continuous integration, cross-browser support, and domain-specific testing languages, he quietly bridges academic rigor and practical tooling in testability and automation.
21 years of coding experience
23 years of employment as a software developer
B.A., Philosophy & Math, B.A., Philosophy & Math at New College of Florida
English
Stackoverflow
455reputation
21kreached
21answers
1question
Github Skills (13)
selenium-ide10
selenium10
concurrency10
test-automation10
ruby10
webdriver9
cucumber6
ajax6
watir6
winapi6
inheritance6
testing6
javascript4
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
SeleniumHQ/selenium
Jan 2005 - Jan 2005
A browser automation framework and ecosystem.
Role in this project:
QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:20 commits in 19 days
Contributions summary:Bret's commits primarily focused on modifying and extending existing test automation infrastructure within the Selenium project. Their work involved fixing synchronization issues in the Ruby implementation, which suggests a deep understanding of the codebase and concurrent programming. They also made changes to the example Ruby test file, indicating a role in maintaining and improving the testing framework's usability and functionality, specifically regarding test execution and error handling. Additionally, the user added and adapted methods to align with Ruby conventions.
dotnetpythonbrowserjavascriptruby
bret/watircraft
Dec 2008 - Oct 2009
Contributions:280 commits in 10 months
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