Meet Yann Sautreuil, QA Lead at L’Occitane en Provence.
He didn’t plan to become a tester, it all started with a phone call he almost ignored. But that unexpected path led to a career in test automation, team leadership, and building frameworks that bring real peace of mind.
In this interview, Yann shares his journey, lessons learned, and a quiet wish to automate… weeding. 
And below is his story 
Q. Tell us a bit about yourself. What do you do, and what excites you most about it?
Sure. I’ve been with the L’Occitane Group for a few years now, working on the L’Occitane en Provence brand. I came in as a QA lead around the time we were reworking a bunch of our websites. There wasn’t much test automation in place, so things felt a bit overwhelming. I had some experience with manual testing, test management, and automation, so I tried to help however I could. What I enjoy most is just being able to improve the way we work and make things a little less stressful for the team.
Q. So is it safe to say you were the first automation tester on the team?
Not exactly. When I joined back in 2020, there were already two test automation engineers on the team. They had actually pre-selected Katalon as the tool, which I was already familiar with and had been keeping an eye on. Before that, in my previous job, we built a custom in-house testing tool. Looking back, that wasn’t the best decision. A lot of the features we worked so hard to develop were already built into Katalon right out of the box, with way less maintenance.
Q. What’s a typical day in your testing life like?
My role now is a bit different from a few years ago. Back then I was part of a project team writing test cases, preparing data, running a lot of manual tests. We were using Katalon, but not deeply integrated yet, so most of the testing was still manual.
That changed with time. On later projects we built a solid test automation setup using Katalon, which really helped reduce the manual load. Now I’m more in a coordination role, supporting and guiding QAs across different teams.
They handle daily story reviews, test planning, and system-level test automation. We’ve also managed to build a kind of smart end-to-end automation flow. Instead of one giant test script, we connect different Katalon projects from various teams. Each team handles their part, like account creation, checkout, payment, and so on, and we pass the test data between them using Excel and Jenkins.
It’s been a huge help. This setup gives developers more confidence before releases and saves us a lot of manual effort, especially for complex journeys that used to be painful to test. So even though I’m not doing hands-on testing all day, helping build and maintain that ecosystem is what most of my days revolve around now.
Q. Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing?
I have a few hobbies. Gardening is a big one. It’s peaceful, though sometimes a bit too much work.
Another hobby is beekeeping. When I left my previous company, my colleagues gifted me a beehive. I had always been curious about it, and that gift gave me the perfect start. Now I have two hives, and I try to harvest honey once or twice a year. It depends on the bees, the weather, and how well the colonies are doing. It reminds me of working with systems lots of moving parts, and timing is everything.
I also play video games. Lately, I’ve been into Kingdom Come and Helldivers. It’s a great way to relax after a long day.
Q.Where are you based?
I live near Geneva, Switzerland. It’s not a big community for tech meetups right now, but I hope that will change. I used to go to more events when I lived in Paris. Now that I’m moving closer to Geneva and working as a full-time employee again, I hope to attend more QA gatherings soon. It’s easier to join when your company can support your time.
Q. If Katalon could add one new feature, what would you wish for?
We had to custom-develop a keyword we call “wait for element ready.” It checks everything before interacting with a web UI object. It scrolls smartly, checks if the object is present, visible, and clickable, and only then proceeds. If not, it logs helpful details and takes a screenshot. It saves us a lot of time debugging.
I’d love to see something like that built directly into Katalon’s core WebUI actions so we don’t have to repeat the same logic in every script. It would really help with test stability, especially for those working on dynamic web applications.
Q. Why did you decide to get involved in the Katalon community?
Mainly to give back. I’ve learned so much just by reading posts and discussions on the forum. When I started using Katalon, I was coming from a background of custom frameworks that required a lot of maintenance. Katalon was a huge improvement especially with TestOps, which gave us out-of-the-box test result sharing and reporting. That alone made a difference.
Over time, I saw how the platform kept getting better, with useful new features and real support from the team. It made me want to be part of that and maybe help others the way I was helped.
-Thank you, Yann, for sharing your story with us. We’re excited to keep learning from you in the Katalon Community!
Feeling inspired by Yann’s story? If you’d like to become a Katalon Creator and share your own testing journey, just reach out! We’re always happy to welcome new voices into our community. 