SDET Unicorns Academy Launch | Begin your SDET journey
Tags: webdev, testing, programming, javascript
Published: 2022-09-21 12:34:31


In this article, we will go over 3 things that you should know as a Quality Engineer - 

- Why knowing just manual testing is not good enough anymore?
- Types of automation you can do to help with your testing
- What is a SDET? Roles and responsibilities of a SDET

Once we have covered that, we will go over what this new academy is about and what are the benefits of joining the academy.

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### Why knowing just manual testing is not good enough anymore?

Software testing jobs have seen a lot of change over the past few years and I have seen them first hand in the past 7 years of my experience. Now, this has been mainly due to the organization moving towards an agile and shift-left approach. Because of that, companies are trying to get the products and features out in front of customers in an extremely fast manner and they want to make sure they do that without sacrificing on the quality.

As a Quality Engineer, you will ensure the product meets that expected quality standards but wait the question is - how do you do that? If you are just manually testing the products/features which are being released almost weekly or even daily, you will have to be on top of your game all the time to make sure your product is stable. We all know that didn't work in the past, it doesn't work in the present and it will most definitely not work in the future.

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### Types of automation you can do to help with your testing

We need to do better than just manually testing the products, the easiest way to do this by putting automated processes in place. For automation, I am not simply talking about frontend automation here, that is important but at the same time you also need to consider backend automation and go one step ahead and consider non-functional automation such as performance, accessibility, security and so on.. And on top of that you might be doing all of this for different platforms even such as web, mobile, desktop etc..

I know all of this sounds like a lot but don't worry, you do not have to know how to implement all of this but you should have enough knowledge to consider these as part of your testing plan.

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### What is a SDET? Roles and responsibilities of a SDET

SDET stands for Software Developer in Test. When I ask people what are the responsibilities of a SDET, they will say something like SDET is someone that has programming knowledge and can build test automation framework.

This is such a common misconception for this role, while programming and building test frameworks are important, it only covers one part of this role. I am not gonna cover the entire roles and responsibilities of a SDET, that's an article for another time but on a high level this is what SDET role & responsibilities entail -

**Understanding of the product from an end-to-end**
You need to understand how the product is built from an end-to-end perspective and I do not mean just know the functionality of the product but instead understand what architecture is being used to develop the product from frontend to backend to understanding the deployment process etc..
Having this understanding will help you test the product better and you can come up with testing strategies accordingly.

**Technical skillset to provide the solutions needed to improve the quality of the product**
What I need you to focus here is that I am not telling you what tools or frameworks to use here or which automation to implement. All I am saying is that you should have the technical skillset to gauge what solution is required to improve the quality of the product.
And that can be done X number of ways whether that’s simply manually testing the product or implementing automation strategy or improving release process or it could be mix of all.﻿

**Soft skills required to collaborate with the team effectively**
Soft skills is something I see so many people simply ignore and this is one of the most important skillset of a SDET. So, what does soft skills involves, some of the top ones in no particular order are communication, leadership, team work, problem-solving, empathy.
If you do not have these soft skills no matter how good you are from technical stand point, nobody would like to work with you.

At this point, you are thinking how do I learn all of this or even how do I get started with this? Well, I have great news for you . I have just launched an academy called the [SDET Unicorns academy](https://academy.sdetunicorns.com/) or in short SDET-U academy.

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### SDET Unicorns Academy 🥳
The goal of the SDET Unicorns Academy is for you the gain all the skills which will help you to boost your career and get you that desired job that you are looking for.

With the SDET-U Academy you can get access to courses and material with the [All Access Membership](https://academy.sdetunicorns.com/p/all-access) which you can pay in a monthly or an annual basis. Let's talk about what you get out of this membership -

**🔥 Membership Benefits:**
- Unlimited access to all existing courses as well as all the future courses
- Access to private Discord community where you can reach out to me directly or have discussion with your fellow students
- Exercises and Quizzes to practice your skills
- Direct support from the Instructor to help you when you are stuck
- Downloadable content to watch offline anywhere and anytime you want
- Custom certificate upon course completion

You can **get 50% off on the first monthly payment** for the next 7 days, simply use this coupon code at the checkout - **HALFOFF** 🎁

Also, there's no commitment with this membership. In fact, you get **30 days of refund policy** with the academy if you are not happy with your purchase. 🤯

**👩🏻‍💻 It's time to begin your SDET journey by joining the Academy today** 👇🏻
[Join Academy](https://academy.sdetunicorns.com/)
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