Become an SDET automation test engineer in 2022
Entering 2022 is a new year, made new friends, and now you want to change careers. You hear that programming is the big thing of the future in the age of technology and think you want to be a part of the future. You see a job advertisement for SDET, the Automation Testing field of QA. Want to find out how one day you can apply for this job, but where do you start? This article Mr. Tester shared includes:
What do SDET Automation Engineers do?
Required coding knowledge/skills (write code)
Software testing concepts
Testing Tools (testing tools)
Get the job SDET / QA Automation Engineer
What do SDET Automation Engineers do?
When you first hear Automation in the title, you probably think of large robots replacing humans and performing a job officially done by humans. You are partly correct, robots do exist, but they are in the form of your computer. And it doesn’t completely replace people, but actually makes their work easier and more efficient.
But who tells these computers what to do and how they will do it? Insert SDET / Automation Engineer. For the rest of the article, we’ll just use SDET for readability. SDET writes code that tells a program what to do. SDET stands for Software Developer Engineer in Test. When saying that you are still a developer, but a developer for the test team. The tests you create will use automation and can be as simple as automatically calling an API and testing the response against longer end-to-end tests, where you’re launching a browser and executing the whole process, then check the database. These automated tests should be based on pre-made test cases in the test plan.
Why not just check everything manually?
Everything should be manually tested initially to confirm that it works. Then any tests that can be repeated as part of the regression will be automated. Automation enables faster, more efficient testing than manual testing. Manual testers may take 3 minutes to complete the workflow and may be subject to distractions and other causes of human error. Mean while, an automated test can do the same test in less than a minute and doesn’t need a supervisor. You can simply press a button and then come back to see the results when finished. Knowledge/coding requirements
Traditionally, most SDET engineers have at least a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. This degree will give you the core principles and fundamentals of several programming languages. However, as access to quality alternative educations increases, this is no longer a difficult requirement for most companies. Now, they’re more interested in your experience and what you do than with just your diploma.
To become SDET, you will need to learn how to code. Prioritize learning object-oriented programming languages like Java or C# and recently Python, Javascript are also used a lot. Object-oriented programming languages have the same core concepts. Once you understand 1, it will be easy for you to pick out the others. If you are completely new to programming, you can use the language to learn Java or Python. While it will be helpful, you don’t need a degree or training program to really learn how to code professionally. There are many self-taught developers at top companies. However, you have to be disciplined and can use resources like YouTube, Udemy, and Skillshare for decent options for learning the basics of coding.
SQL
No matter where you get the job, you must know how to query the database. A database is where all the information related to a business is stored. They are then stored and decomposed into containers called tables in the database. To access this information, you must use the SQL programming language. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. Some popular DBMSs that use SQL are Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server.
With SQL, you only need to focus on the basic commands “Select”, “Insert”, “Update”, “Delete”, “Create”, and “Drop”. Learning how to use these commands is usually more than enough and will get you through most of the work.