Plenty of engineers today have the benefit to code full time and get paid for it without even ever obtaining a computer science degree.

There are plenty of possibilities to get that prized coding position. Just keep in your mind the fact that depends on where you start, your coding journey can and will eventually lead to different career opportunities and resources.

What is the easiest way to start your coding career?  Make the transition from manual software tester to automation engineer.

What Is QA?

You’ve probably heard a million of times about QA Department in many tech companies, right? Who are QA-engineers and why are they so needful? Software development is a tricky process. When new features are added to an existing coding base, rather often it won’t work as it’s expected or described to or will, possibly, cause bugs in other extensions of the product.

QA and Testing analysts use various methods of testing in order to identify bugs. Not only do they search for bugs, but also they are responsible for testing features of the product in order to suggest improvements that will strengthen the end-user experience.

Despite lots of methodologies and best practices for software testing, the industry can converge to two positions: manual testing and test Automation.

Manual Testing

Manual testing is the most primitive of all testing types and helps to find bugs in the software system. Any new application must be manually tested before its testing can be automated. Manual testing requires more effort, but is necessary to check automation feasibility.

Manual Testing does not require knowledge of any testing tool.

The key concept of Manual Testing is to ensure that the application is error free and it is working in conformance to the specified functional requirements.

Test Suites or cases, are designed during the testing phase and should have 100% test coverage. It also makes sure that reported defects are fixed by developers and re-testing has been performed by testers on the fixed defects.

Basically, this testing checks the quality of the system and delivers bug-free product to the customer.

Test Automation

Modern tech companies, especially startups, may not even employ manual software testers. The work is rapidly moving to automation engineers and automated tests.

This makes sense. A few lines of code, backed up by a solid testing framework, can perform the same amount of software tests that would take dozens of manual testers much more time to complete.

Test automation typically involves writing software tests which access a framework that mirrors the actual product being tested. A tool such as Selenium WebDriver or TestStack.White will use the elements written in the framework to automate the browser or desktop application being tested.

Becoming an effective Automation Engineer requires solid programming skills, but it also has a lot in common with employing best practices as a manual tester.

Automation Engineer

A position in manual software testing isn’t overly difficult to get, even without experience in the industry. Making the transition from manual tester to automation engineer is a great way to slowly ramp yourself up into a full-time coding job.

Softheme will support you with resources and feedback along the way. Our company is interested to have automation engineers with product knowledge and knowledge of testing best practices.

Remember that your progress and learning after all comes down to your determination and hard work. You will have to prove yourself.

So where can you go from here? A career as an automation engineer leaves a fair amount of room for specialization and expertise. It is also possible to eventually transition into a developer position after getting coding experience.

Cheer up!

Many tech companies actually have a hard time filling automation engineer positions, so this is an excellent opportunity to get your foot in the door, prove your worth, and get paid to code.

The two major things to do are:

• Work closely with other engineers and automation management to learn the tools and best practices that they expect from their respective teams
• Contribute code to the team that will set you apart and show your ability to learn and execute

For many of us, just getting the first opportunity can be the most challenging part of our coding journey. Making the transition from manual tester to automation engineer is an excellent path to success.

Related articles

• Why Outsource Testing? (softheme.com)
• Online Career Tests - Who Are You in IT (softheme.com)