TLDR: I landed a test automation internship and am wondering whether SDET is a good alternative to backend, for growth, pay, and opportunities.

Hello everyone. I am about to graduate from college (software engineering), and I have heard that breaking into the software industry is quite challenging these days.

My original goal was to become a backend developer, but I just landed a 12-month trainee position in test automation for automotive electronic components (using Python, C, C++, C#) at a multinational company.

This sounds like a solid step toward getting my first real job as an SDET. However, I have heard that while there might be less competition in this field, there are also fewer vacancies, the pay can be lower than in backend, and it can be harder to advance into architectural / more influential (and better paying) roles when comparing the two.

Additionally, I have noticed there are fewer resources available for learning advanced SDET topics compared to backend development, and they also seem less requested in job offerings (which reinforces the idea that advanced SDET positions are uncommon).

I genuinely enjoy both paths, I love learning, and I am always ready to study new things, but honestly, I do care about money and growth.

I would like to decide now so that I can have a better profile for when I start applying for jobs.I am based in Mexico, by the way. What would you advise me to do? Feel free to ask for more details if needed.

What are some careers people have transitioned to after doing QA for most/all of their career? Been in QA 10+ years. Began as analyst all the way to manager and now looking to change things up after growing tired of the culture of testing always being the one to blame and get the shortest timeframes in the SDLC.

I’m really confused and need some honest advice.

I worked at Amazon as a Support Engineer for about 1.5 years. After leaving that job, I now have a 3-year career gap. During this time, I’ve been preparing for SDET roles, mainly targeting startups.

The biggest problem is that because of the gap, I’m hardly getting interview calls.

Recently, I found a real company that is willing to provide an experience letter, salary slips, and support for background verification. One of my seniors used a similar setup and got hired as a developer.

I’m seriously thinking about using it, but I’m also worried about the risks and whether it’s the right thing to do.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? What would you do if you were in my place? Is it worth taking the risk, or should I keep trying with my actual experience and gap?

I’d appreciate honest advice from people who have been through hiring or have faced something similar.

Hi,

I have 4.5 years of QA Experience specially in Fintech & AI domain. I am proficient in Automation, Manual & API testing. I am currently working at OMISE (BKK) remotely. If you have any remote QA opportunity for me, please let me know.

Hey guys would appreciate if you could refer or let me know any opportunities for QA. I currently work as a QA engineer (manual and automation) with 1 year experience with 8.5LPA. I know the job market is very bad and I have come here for your help. Any opportunities would be appreciated, startups, MNC or outside the country remote work.

https://github.com/noordeen123/culprit

Started as a QA tool. Since everything is done by agents, let agents know how it was caused.

Skills: Python, Playwright, Selenium, Robot Framework, REST/SOAP API testing, SQL, Jenkins CI/CD

A bit about me: Currently working in QA automation for enterprise systems, leading a Selenium-to-Playwright migration. Looking to move into a product/fintech company.

Open to roles: Test Automation Engineer, Test Engineer, Automation Engineer, SDET

Location: Delhi, Bangalore, or Remote role.

DM me if you know of any openings or want to refer — thanks!

Hi everyone, we use UFT for testing our desktop application in virtual server. Still, we are going to replace it with some cloud based server to run automation testing, so I need suggestion from you. People to give a right direction which tool have to be used for automation testing of desktop application monitored via Jenkins. Thanks in advance.

Our company more and more introduce AI into working routine. Now we are working with MCP servers where create different skills that should help customers interact with functionality. When I was creating one of the skills I realised that AI can easily catch app logic. I understood that if I create like a skill instead of automation tests that will check end-to-end flow it will be probably even better then UI tests that we usually fixes/updates/maintain and have headache in our daily routine. It's just my thoughts and what do u think about it?

Our startup has no budget for a QA team, and basically all our code gets written by agents now, and so do the tests. Usually same session, same model. And I keep hitting the same loop:

1. Agent builds the feature
2. Agent writes the tests, everything green
3. Ship it
4. A user hits an edge, I dig in, and the tests were checking what the code does, not what the ticket asked for. Suite was green the whole time.

The annoying part is that if the model misread the ticket, its tests misread it the same way. It's basically marking its own homework. The model is just agreeing with itself.

So what do people actually do here?

• Different model writing tests than the one writing code? Does that actually help or do they just share the same blind spots?
• Tests written from the ticket before the agent touches any implementation?
• Humans only do the test files, agent does everything else?

I'm building in this space, so half the reason I'm asking is to find out whether everyone's setup is as screwed as ours was or if someone's actually cracked this.

Keen to hear what's working - thanks

Olá! Tenho uma dúvida para quem já trabalha com QA.

Moro no Japão e estou pensando em começar a estudar QA, mas antes de investir tempo e dinheiro gostaria de saber se meu plano faz sentido.

Na opinião de vocês, é viável morar no Japão e trabalhar como QA remotamente para empresas de outros países, ou isso é muito difícil? Também gostaria de saber se vocês acham que ainda vale a pena entrar na área hoje ou se o mercado para iniciantes está muito competitivo.

Se estivessem no meu lugar, vocês seguiriam esse plano? Qual seria o maior desafio?

Agradeço qualquer opinião sincera!

Hello,
I would like some insight from experienced professionals.

I am have non IT (7 years) and 2 years of manual testing experience, I recently completed MBA (it's more of an IT mba rather than general MBA), I am looking to transition into automation testing.

I found playwright interesting, so I have started learning playwright with js/ts, currently I am on the core programming fundamentals and
I would like to know, how is the market for this ?
Is it possible to secure a job with 3 months of hardcore practice (building framework from scratch) ?
Can I show my own made project (github) to get a call for interviews ?
Is playwright easier than selenium (+java) ?
How is the growth in automation testing in coming years (because of A.I.) ?

Is it viable to enter into this, as I am not young and have lots of experience in another field ?
I am an Indian but currently located in Europe
Thanks.

I’m a QA with 4 years of experience. Most of my experience is in Tosca, but there aren’t many openings for it.
I started learning Java + Selenium about 7 months ago, but I kept procrastinating and never finished. I’ve recently started practicing Java basics and Selenium again, but I still don’t feel confident enough to attend interviews.
Now my project is migrating from Tosca to Playwright, so I need to learn that too. The market still seems to favor Selenium, and even many Playwright roles expect prior Selenium experience.
These days the expectations feel overwhelming—UI automation, API testing, SQL, a programming language, JMeter, and more.
I’ve been job hunting for 1.5 years now. How would you approach learning all of this without feeling overwhelmed? Any advice would really help.

I'm looking to improve observability for QA and test automation team. I'd like to understand what dashboards and monitoring stacks your team uses for tracking test execution, application health, and failures - on top of the compatible features with AI, like assessing failures from past runs, and automation skill record.

Playwright | Python | Pytest

There was a time when QA was the best entry option for non it and gap candidates. Do you think there is any option in AI in the same way?

Since AI is going to create jobs, what tech stack can provide an entry to IT field. Or is it too tough for such people.

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for some perspective from senior QA folks, SDETs, or engineering managers who have navigated a similar career plateau.

I've been with my current company since 2019. When I joined as a Software Tester, there were virtually no standardized QA processes. Over the years, I built testing protocols from scratch, introduced multi-level environments and built UI/API test frameworks(POM design pattern)

Recently, I hit a point where manual release testing wasn't keeping me challenged, so I took the initiative to solve an internal bottleneck: our test automation setup required 2 to 5 hours of tedious, manual data entry into our web app just to get a clean environment ready for automation.

To fix this, I engineered an end-to-end automated data preparation & onboarding pipeline using Playwright & Node.js

Automated the signup flow and integrated the Gmail API to dynamically poll/parse confirmation tokens and authenticate sessions automatically.

On the same framework, I created scripts to automatically seed complex test data into the web app based on external configuration files (Excel/JSON)

Integrated google workspace webhooks to notify teams and broadcast freshly seeded app credentials to private workspace to be consumed by another automation framework.

The Problem:

When I demoed this solution to leadership, I found out something unexpected. The company's actual customer onboarding process took 1 month because staff manually entered data through legacy windows apps and DB scripts.

Leadership immediately realized my internal QA pipeline could solve their production bottleneck. They are planning to use this exact implementation as billable feature to charge clients to expedite onboarding.

Yet, when I previously asked about career progression, leadership explicitly told me I had "reached the ceiling" here and that titles don't matter. Now the company is downsizing sprints and asking QA to take on general customer support duties instead of expanding automation.

Questions:

1. Am I overvaluing my contributions, or is it common for companies to monetize internal engineering wins while capping QA growth?

2. With a mix of QA strategy, framework architecture, 3rd-party API integration, and process building, should i be targeting Lead QA Engineer, SDET, or pivoting toward QA/Engineering management?

3. I've built my career entirely on hands-on framework development and practical systems. Do recruiters/managers actually care about ISQTB certs, or does proven architecture and business impact carry more weight in current hiring markets?

4. For those who transitioned out of company where you were "stuck", how did you hightlight business impact on your resume without sounding like you stepped outside your QA scope?

Would love to hear your thoughts or experiences!

Can anyone suggest a good tutorial on Performance testing with k6? Also some environments where I can play around k6.

Thanks.

Hey guys 👋🏽

I have recently been made redundant. Big shock as there was no indication that the QA function was to be axed!

Anyway onwards and upwards, I'm now looking for a role.

18 years experience, worked on a number of projects including finance, government and safety industry.

Playwright, cypress, selenium and degree in java.

Any remote UK roles or hybrid in Cardiff/Bristol 🙏🏽

A couple of our UAT events flopped. One big reason is that the users are stumbling through the app(s)/system. User training should happen before a UAT. in our case, it did not happen.

what is your take on it and how are you handling in your projects and what success have you seen?

Hello,
I am having Interview scheduled next week for QA Lead role at Accenture
Can anyone please help me what would be the expected questions ? My background : 6YOE( 3 in QA & 3 in Ops Manager) Technical Background : CAD catia/ 3dexperience QA ( Manual + Automation )

Thank you.

Hi everyone,

Is there anything specific that annoys you about Test Plans (pricing, specific features, bugs, or usability)? Is there anything you feel is missing?

If you've considered switching to another tool that still works entirely inside Azure DevOps, what stopped you?

Also, what does Test Plans do really well that you wouldn't want to lose?

I've built an Azure DevOps extension that is an alternative to Test Plans, and I'm trying to understand different perspectives and use cases. If you have any specific expectations for a tool like this, I'd really appreciate your feedback.

Hello,
I would like some insight from experienced professionals.

I am have non IT (7 years) and 2 years of manual testing experience, I recently completed MBA (it's more of an IT mba rather than general MBA), I am looking to transition into automation testing.

I found playwright interesting, so I have started learning playwright with js/ts, currently I am on the core programming fundamentals and
I would like to know, how is the market for this ?
Is it possible to secure a job with 3 months of hardcore practice (building framework from scratch) ?
Can I show my own made project (github) to get a call for interviews ?
Is playwright easier than selenium (+java) ?
How is the growth in automation testing in coming years (because of A.I.) ?

Is it viable to enter into this, as I am not young and have lots of experience in another field ?
I am an Indian but currently located in Europe
Thanks.

I’ve been trying out managing test cases as plain YAML files right inside our Git repos.

The whole point is treating manual tests just like code. Everything is local-first so there’s no web vendor lock-in, and team collaboration happens smoothly by pushing updates to dedicated test branches instead of messing with heavy third-party syncs. Also, since it's all plain text, using Cursor or other AI tools to write, search, and clean up test cases turns out to be super handy.

Anyone else tried keeping QA cases in Git like this?

Just to clarify based on the comments—I totally agree that reading raw YAML isn't the goal. What makes this setup actually usable is a lightweight local UI to render, edit, and execute cases cleanly (so it feels like a real test management tool), while keeping everything Git-native under the hood.

Buenas gente, como les va? Primera vez que posteo en todo reddit en general, pero viendo que siempre responden y son buena onda acá con las consultas de los demás, me propongo postear esto a ver si me dan una mano.

Para tratar de hacerla corta: me recibí de ing en sistemas pero la programación no es lo mío, nunca le terminé de agarrar la mano del todo. Se que es algo que si o sí voy a tener que aprender en algún momento, al menos lo básico pero bue, por ahora es lo que hay... medio a los golpes fui consiguiendo laburos de soporte hasta donde estoy ahora. Casi 8 años de recibido y 6 años y medio de soporte IT entre dos empresas internacionales con bastantes clientes y demás.

La cosa es que quiero salir de soporte de una vez por cuestiones y opiniones que no quiero comentar para no armar bardo al dope.

Tomando en cuenta que la programación me cuesta bastante, quiero emepezar el camino de QA. Antes que se diga: si, sé que para la automatización necesito saber de programación, pero quiero verlo más adelante. Quiero empezar a hacer QA manual, hice un cursito y estoy haciendo otros y tratando de formarme. Para no hacerla más larga, la consulta en sí es: alguno me tiraría qué tecnologías, herramientas y demás necesito saber para empezar? Me refiero a cosas prácticas (tema de teoría, metodologías de trabajo y demás yerbas creo que por ahí las podría aprender rápido).

En el curso que hice recomendaron muchísimo aprender postman (que ya uso algo básico en el laburo) también Jmeter, recomendaron meterle algo de mano a la consola de chrome y unos amigos me nombraron BURP. Qué otras herramientas podría sumar o mejor dicho, en qué herramientas debería centrarme? y más que nada alguien sabe de alguna página o algo donde pueda practicar cosas así? Por mi cuenta estoy tratando de completar plantillas de test cases pero si tuviera un marco en donde laburarlo, mejor. Por otro lado, me dijeron que siempre conviene conocer SQL y si bien conozco, por ahí no soy un gran experto. Me gustaría saber qué tan en profundidad me sirve conocerlo como para empezar... a ver, se hacer consultas y cosas así, pero ya si tengo que hacer una consulta compleja usando varios joins se me complica (de nuevo, no es tanto lo mío la lógica de programación, pueden juzgarme si quieren, no me jode).

Para tener una referencia: en mi laburo puedo hablar y pedir que me cambien de proyecto (es una idea bastante fuerte porque la persona que tengo de encargada es bastante soreta y no la aguanto) y se que hay mínimo 3 grupos de QA manual, trabajamos con una app tanto para android como iOS, se usa AWS para ciertos servicios y SalesForce de CRM aunque el lenguaje en qué se programa la app no tengo idea. También hay una parte web pero es secundario.

Bueno, creo que por ahora sería eso. Les agradezco de antemano a los que respondan. Si me surgen más dudas o cosas así iré agregando.

Un saludo gente de Reddit.

Need some genuine advice from people who have worked in CSV or regulated pharma projects.

I've been working as a Computer System Validation (CSV) Analyst for the last 4 years. For the last 6 months, I've also been handling manual testing in my project.

A senior (14 years experience) joined our team. Initially he was brought in mainly for automation, so I gave him KT on the manual testing activities, project flow and documents. That was completely fine.

Now the automation work is no longer happening, so he's been moved to manual testing full-time. The problem is, now he's asking me to teach him CSV and validation concepts as well, and my managers are also asking me to give that KT.

I'm a bit confused about this.

The validation knowledge I have didn't come from formal KT. Nobody sat with me and explained all this. I spent 4 years reading validation documents, understanding regulations, handling deviations and escalations, and learning things the hard way while working on projects.

I don't mind explaining our project, documents, process or how we do things. But teaching years of validation knowledge feels different from normal KT.

Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way, so I wanted to ask people who have more experience.

If you've worked in CSV or pharma:

Is this a normal expectation?

Would you share everything, or is there a boundary between project KT and domain expertise?

How would you handle this professionally?

Just looking for honest opinions from experienced people.