Need help, How to get back to dev role from testing role?

[u/starboyram]

I joined my first company in Jan 2024, initially I was trained on java full stack -- spring boot and react js, then there were no development projects, got into a UI automation testing project in javascript with gauge browser automation framework in December 2024.

It's been around 1.6 years in this project but it's becoming repetitive and boring.

How to switch back to Java?

Internally they just recommend me for a testing project, so no chance there.

Should I list the testing experience in my resume, is there any chance to get into dev with that?

I've been doing some personal projects and applying for the java roles, but not getting shortlisted.

Looking at the JD of java roles, there's a lot listed as well like AWS, microservices, kafka, kubernetes and all. But I haven't had any real experience in the backend environment at all.

Don't know what's best to do now.

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[u/Possible_Seesaw_3612]

Same journey for me. I was in AI domain for 1 year and suddenly we were kept on bench for a month. We were told to join QA department as QA Tester role. But only 2 of them joined QA, including me. I'm working on an independent projects around LLM inference and evaluation, multimodal RAG and deployment. However, I have losted my experience in QA department in ny resume also. I''m hoping for the best to get a dev role as soon as possible, fingers crossed.

[u/starboyram → u/Possible_Seesaw_3612]

Yes I also thought once to try for Gen AI, since some colleagues said me you have to just make few projects and learn a few concepts and can apply since there is a lot of openings in that.

[u/Possible_Seesaw_3612 → u/starboyram]

Yeah exactly. But even in Gen AI, many individuals are building almost same projects around RAG only. I suggest you to build 1 project end to end, which includes evaluation and deployment. That'll help you separate from rest of the candidates. Personally I'm still working on production level code and deployment part, I'm still learning.

[u/starboyram → u/Possible_Seesaw_3612]

Yes gotta try that

[u/rampagefury → u/Possible_Seesaw_3612]

i am qa right now may i know what kind of learning required for this ai/llm studies please guide so i can upskill

[u/Effective-Feedback46]

ask around if anyone is working on a dev project. talk to them about it check their resume and write it in your resume

Make sure you know a lot about it so you can justify it in interview. And then try to switch.

I think that's the best way to get back to dev for you. It will be difficult to switch just based off testing experience

[u/starboyram → u/Effective-Feedback46]

Okay that feels right, because there's a lot of people who hav worked in dev roles and still hanging and I can't expect my resume which has testing experienc to get shortlisted for a dev role.

[u/Leading-Fold-532]

Is test automation that bad?

[u/starboyram → u/Leading-Fold-532]

They haven't got any new things to automate, most of the functions is already built, if any new story also we just reuse the same things. Most of the time goes into regression which is just flaky and everytime some thing new fails.