The main reason is we need to run the automated tests as a specific shared account. There are a few reasons for this. First, it needs to be a shared account since no one wants to have Jenkins login as their own user accounts, for obvious reasons. Second, this shared account has access to the builds that need to be tested. And third, for better or for worse, our automated test software needs to have a one-time manual setup to work on an agent. This means that once and (hopefully) only once, someone needs to login as the shared account on the Windows PC that will run the automated tests and configure the automated test software. This is stuff like which serial ports to use, what files to test, etc. At some point, we would like to be able to not do this, and have our automated smoke test configure this stuff automatically on-the-fly, but we're not quite there yet. Maybe someday if my group gets more staff :P.