How can a QA Engineer becomes a SDET

In this post you will know how can a QA engineer becomes a SDET. SDET professionals who can participate in development of the application and also in testing of the software developed. Tester on the other hand can be a manual tester or quality analyst who does not participate in software development. SDET are often involved in developing the quality, robust and high performance code which is useful in automation of test cases or designing the testing framework which can be used as a testing tool. SDET also reviews the design and processes of the software product.

On a high level side, SDET can be seen as a software developer and also a tester but he will be a part of testing phase and not of development phase of the software development life cycle. To better understand the differences between SDET and Tester, read below points.

SDET is highly skilled resource with development as well as testing skills; on the other hand tester is involved in preparing and executing the test cases either manually or by automation.

Testers are resources with limited programming skills and they are much focused on black box or functional testing whereas SDETs are skilled resources with good programming skills and do the job of tester (white box testing) as well as developer in test automation.

SDET being very proficient in software development, they can participate in test automation tool development and may make it for generic use. Testers are not expected to develop test automation tools, they may use these test automation tool to automate the test cases required for their software application or project.

Often it is seen in an organization, tester or Quality Analyst who have developed the test automation framework are promoted to new role as SDET and can participate in review of design of software application or other test automation framework.

In a comprehensive example we may demonstrate this, if the testing of an API is to be conducted then it cannot be done without writing any line of code. Therefore the test role here could be SDET. However if it is to test user interface or GUI which requires the black box testing and there is no need to write any line of code to test, this test role here could be STE (Software Test Engineer).

SDET are expected for more duties over general testing role like performance testing, security testing, automated generation of test data, test environment setup, developing test automation tool etc.

Unlike manual testers, SDET are expected to have domain knowledge so that they can participate in designing the test cases. All duties of a tester are expected from SDET.

SDET are not just more than a tester. SDET is a mix of developer as well as tester who has exposure to project management, interacts and understands end user software requirements, knows product or domain knowledge, participates in product or software designing, knows how to code and build test automation tools. This all in one kind of skill set make the SDET role very unique and high demand in present software industry.

Qualification of an SDET:

Knowledge of C#, Java, .NET or any other programming languages.

Experience of working with "AGILE + DevOps" process management methodology.

Knowledge of Web Driver, MS Test, N Unit, Selenium, Testing, etc.

Behaviour Driven Development

Know how to find out bottlenecks and thresholds in existing code with the help of automation tools.

Understanding of Object-Oriented Design

Qualification of a developer

Hands-on experience on Java is a must

Core JAVA REST API testing Front End Testing

Experience in performing backend testing

SQL skills

Unix skills

Know how to set up an Automation framework

Selenium Web Driver, Cucumber, TestinG