That was a question, or – I would call it “a hope” || “light at the end of the tunnel” – when I was doing my first steps into QA career. It happened that I was a strong believer that I will be a software developer, but turned to be a QA Automation. So is it the same thing?
The answer is – yes. Both QA Automation Engineer and Software Developer have one common task: programming. While the first has to write the “scripts” which will test the application on an environment, the second implements changes into the application and pushes the code into that testing environment.
Of course, the set of skills which are required from a QA and a Development resources majorly differ. Let’s point out some of the major responsibilities of QA Automation Tester:
Automation Engineer: Most requested skills & technologies
SQL or relational database skills
Programming language for writing scripts (Java, including J2EE and EJBs; Perl, Python, C/C++)
Web Technologies (XML, general web development skills including HTTP/HTTPS, HTML, CSS, and XPATH, Web services or referenced SOAP and XSL/XSLT)
Automation Technologies (Selenium, including Selenium Remote Control (RC), QTP, xUnit frameworks such as JUnit, NUnit, TestNG; LoadRunner; JMeter)
As we can see, from technical perspective, there is no big difference between an automation resource and a developer. It’s the same set of skills required, besides some technologies and tools that differ. Both involve writing code in different programming languages and technologies. With that being said, both can call themselves programmers, and both have to aim for a clean code writing, learning algorithms and data structures, understand the design patterns and the list goes on.
If you are a QA Automation resource, and feel underrated in front of development field, you don’t have to feel that way. Your skills and opportunities depend on you, and there is always a high chance of easily moving from QA Automation position to a Developer. But, don’t rush to go there; try to achieve as much as possible of experience from where you are now, and your value for the new team will be much more valuable, because you have a test-driven approach which is useful in development.
PS. QA Automation is found to be much more fun comparing to development by many folks that have been on the both sides of the table, and the economical curve shows a clear growth in the ask of position for QA resources! 🙂