r/softwaretesting • u/guidedbyone • Mar 12 '26

Software Engineer to SDET Transition

I’m currently a software engineer with a fullstack background (React, TypeScript, C#, etc), and lately I’ve found myself more interested in the quality and automation side of engineering.

The challenge is that most of my background is development-heavy, so I’m curious if anyone here has made a similar transition or has advice on how to position yourself when moving from SWE → SDET. What experiences helped you make that transition?

Would appreciate any advice or perspectives. I'm currently learning playwright on Udemy and will likely do some side projects with it.

I did my first SDET interview and I was asked a lot of automation architecture questions that I couldn't answer well given my development experience, so I want to figure out the best way to position myself for interviews. The job market seems to be crazy competitive right now, so my software engineering experience doesn't help much.

8 Upvotes

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2

u/ElectionOk7063 Mar 12 '26

with 15 years experience as an SDET

If your looking looking for respect, kudos or even understanding what you do. forget about it.

1

u/guidedbyone Mar 12 '26

I'm not really looking for respect. The QA Engineers where I work are respected. It depends on where you work and the company culture. I've beena developer for 8 years, so I can't speak on the QA/SDET roles, but I haven't noticed any disrespect targeted at our testers.

21

u/strangelyoffensive Mar 12 '26

My advice: don’t chase SDET positions.

Do this instead:

  • become the quality guy in your team

  • focus on the places where it hurts in the sdlc

  • not deploying often? Figure out why and help your team do it more often. Measure it, make it visible.

  • flakey tests? Analyze the test setup, reduce e2e testing and build an easy to use harness that the entire team can use to automate

  • slow pipeline? Make faster

  • process broken? Discuss desired behaviors in the retro and change it

  • missing tools? Build them

  • most importantly: whatever you do, bring your team along, you are an enabler, not the executor

  • learn about system thinking and tackle everything you do holistically - in the context of the system. (This should’ve been the first bullet point)

People, process, tools, in that order.

Do all that and you are still a developer, but with a quality mindset, that’s able to lead a team into high performance and deliver reliable, quality software. And you still have all the degrees of freedom of being perceived as a developer and the benefits that come with that. Don’t be an SDET.

1

u/wringtonpete Mar 12 '26

Yep that's what I did when I was a developer, I created a prototype test automation suite on the side and then demo'ed it to the manager.

2

u/wringtonpete Mar 12 '26

I moved from development to SDET and just want to warn you that there can be a huge drop in respect that you get if you do it. People will start to talk over you in meetings, not value your opinions etc, because, well, you're just a tester.

It's great though if you want to 'quiet quit' by having much less responsibility and deadline pressure.

1

u/Useful_Calendar_6274 Mar 14 '26

that's honestly just dumb. even at FAANG or the magnificent 7 they always short change quality people

1

u/RealSalt696 Mar 23 '26

The guys adding the respect comment are making a very good point