QA / SDET Engineer

Overview

QA and SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) engineers ensure that production software ships without breaking customers. Modern QA has moved well beyond manual testing into automation engineering, performance testing, security testing, and CI/CD pipeline ownership. SDETs at Indian product companies (Razorpay, Swiggy, PhonePe, CRED) and global capability centres (Microsoft IDC, Amazon, Google) operate as full-fledged engineers who write production-grade test infrastructure. The role combines coding skills with deep product and risk thinking.

Day-to-day responsibilities

Write automated test suites in Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, or Appium; design test strategies for new features; build test data factories and mock services; integrate tests into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions); run load tests with JMeter or k6; investigate production incidents and write regression tests; collaborate with developers on test-friendly architecture; track quality metrics (defect density, test coverage, MTTR).

Skills required

• Test automation frameworks (Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, Appium)
• Programming (Python, Java, JavaScript)
• API testing (Postman, REST Assured)
• Performance testing (JMeter, k6, Gatling)
• CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI)
• Test design (boundary, equivalence, exploratory)
• SQL and database testing
• Security testing basics (OWASP)

Education path

Career progression

1. 1
   QA Engineer / SDET-1 (0-2 yrs)
2. 2
   SDET-2 (2-5 yrs)
3. 3
   Senior SDET (5-8 yrs)
4. 4
   Staff SDET / QA Architect (8-12 yrs)
5. 5
   Quality Engineering Lead (12+ yrs)

Top employers in India

Useful certifications

• ISTQB Foundation Level
• ISTQB Advanced Test Automation Engineer
• Certified Selenium Professional
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
• k6 Performance Testing

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