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 second Bing interview here. - Eugenia

'Softie in question: Brad Sarsfield  Job title: Senior Test Lead - Bing

Describe the SDET role to our audience in 10 words or less.
Technical freedom through code and experiments making architecture unapologetically excellent!

Brad, I know that you have worked and had success in other business groups within MSFT and that you chose to move to Bing within the last six months.  Why Bing? Why an SDET role?
The SDET role is a no-brainer for me. Technical creative freedom is something all engineers enjoy, and is a luxury that the SDET role affords. 

My code is not bound to operate within the confines of the sometimes strict requirements and dependencies that is often necessary when you contribute directly to product code.  There are many times I’ve been able to think of an idea in the morning; and have it implemented and checked in by the end of the day. That is the freedom that I love. 

For example, if I want to take a dependency on an experimental tool from MSR to design a test or experiment, as an SDET, I can take this dependency very easily. This allows me to operate outside the limitations that may be required to work within the confines of the dependencies we have on production code.  My charter and the charter of the SDET role is to influence positive change in the product, directly through code or architectural observations and suggestions.  Making things work is one thing, making sure things work really, really well is what I do as an SDET.

Moving from a traditional boxed product to work on Bing Infrastructure was an amazing move for me. The change for me really up-leveled my technical reach and speed of influence over the areas I am responsible for. Bing is setup to have lightning fast “twitch” time from idea to live deployment. We get immediate feedback on what works and what doesn’t and are empowered to make the changes needed to iterate over our solutions very quickly.  Combined with the technical creative freedom, I can make changes to the product or service that I would never dream of making in the traditional boxed product environment.

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
“Cosmos” is one of the world’s largest data storage and computational platforms it enables massively parallel query execution over many petabytes of information.   Recently, there has been a “clash of the communities” as many talented folks from the database world have debated other equally talented folks from the parallel computing world in the Map-Reduce versus Parallel DBMS comparisons.  I get to work on a system that leverages the strengths of both and bridges the gap between the two.  I have been able to contribute to advancing Dryad and extending the SCOPE language over many 10’s of thousands of computers across multiple datacenters.  I’ve been able to design experiments, telemetry analysis and machine learning techniques to help advance the system; making it self-healing, self-adjusting and self-aware (ok, maybe we’re not that far yet).

As you perform your day to day job, do you have the opportunity to learn new things? How?
Every single day I learn something new, this is what keeps me really engaged and allows for continual self-improvement.  I wake up excited to come to work every day, seriously.  As a team we’re pushing the capabilities and boundaries of what is known in computer science, there are things we are doing which weren’t possible two years ago, or even two months ago. As we advance Bing I am continually learning new things and new technical skills. I tend to learn through finding problems and then trying to find solutions to those problems.  I learn through experiments and by working with others to push the technology forward.  In the past 6 months I’ve gone through debugging kernel mode disk drivers all the way up to implementing WCF/Silverlight applications for data visualization.  The SDET role has allowed me to have that flexible involvement.  I am surrounded with very talented engineers, there are many learning opportunities when you are surrounded by top-tier industry experts.

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?
Personally, I get great satisfaction in helping Bing move forward through technical innovations.  Cosmos, as a team, we are working towards an Exabyte data store; with that come an amazing set of technical opportunities and architectural challenges that very few get to participate in.   I love seeing my ideas have a large impact on Bing’s capabilities.

Your favorite Bing commercial? Your favorite Bing homepage picture?
My favorite Bing commercial is the Search Overload: Hawaii. I had the privilege of living and working for Microsoft in Hawaii before I joined Bing.  “Brah! I was stoked when I caught that tasty barrel”. Classic.  Along the same lines I loved the turtle picture from 7/23.  Aloha!

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?
One thing I’d like to share is the feeling of excitement inside Bing that those outside may not be able to feel. On the ground, inside Bing engineering, there is a huge momentum of excitement that continues to build.  We are rapidly innovating at an amazing pace; just as the “Bing Brain” is getting smarter the feeling of excitement inside Bing is becoming more contagious as we continue to grow the Bing engineering team.