If a person works as a Test Automation Engineer, their goal will be to validate the functionality of software solutions, detect their defects, errors, and problems. Their job consists of creating the initial test designs, writing the scripts, installing the automation testing protocols, and reporting the results.
What to start with
Anna Manzhura has recently joined the Clearmove team as a General QA Intern. She’s the one who can guide us through the details of gaining this profession:
“To become an effective QA Automation Engineer you should already be an effective QA Manual. In addition to this, you should also have a technical background, be familiar with at least one programming language, know some basics of OOP and databases. But the most important part – you have to be ready to always broaden your knowledge, learn new tools, and develop your skills every day. You cannot just buy one book or enroll in one course on QA Automation and expect to become a specialist right away. It’s a long process of constant study and growth. I just started my way in this position and I have already learned some JavaScript, Typescript, basics of WebdriverIO, and CucumberJs frameworks. And I feel that that’s just the beginning, a lot more of practice and study is ahead for me.”
Resources for learning
Anna recommends to start with the following books:
1. “A Practitioner’s Guide to Software Test Design” by Lee Copeland
A comprehensive and up-to-date, but at the same time easy-to-digest introduction to software test design, that presents all the crucial test design techniques in one place. It is considered to be a useful handbook for test engineers, developers, and QA professionals.
2. “Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach” by Cem Kaner
In this book, the world’s leading software testing experts share their wisdom and experience. It’s more than just tips and tricks, it speeds you through the critical testing phase without the extensive trial. Over 200 lessons for all key topic areas are included, like test design, test management, testing strategies, and bug reporting.
After these books, according to Anna’s recommendations, you can continue with official documentation on the chosen tool or framework for automation (e.g. https://webdriver.io/ for WebdiverIO).
While Anna has just started her way in this field, her manager, Herman Zubenko, has been in the industry for a while and is currently holding a position as a Lead QA Automation Engineer. Therefore, he has more recommendations for young specialists:
- To understand who is a Software Engineer in Test, I can recommend the book “How Google Tests Software”. In this book, it is explained through the example of Google staff that people who work in automation are the same software engineers but working in the testing field.
- Subsequently, we’ve come to the question “How to be a successful software engineer”. Regarding this matter, I can recommend Harvard’s CS50 course. It is online and free!
- There’s a course from Test Automation University with learning paths in different directions in automation and more. You can learn the language here, get familiar with git basics, patterns of test creation. Moreover, you can get the knowledge of a new framework for automated tests, find out about CI/CD, and much more. It is also for free.
- You can always find something interesting on GoogleBlog or look at interesting cases from other people on habr.com and dou.ua.
- Another good option is attending conferences. In 2020 it isn’t easy to get to offline conferences but many of them moved online, some even became free. This is an excellent chance to use it. This website makes streams with the rockstars of testing and development. For example, you can meet James Whittaker, the author of the book about testing at Google, the author of the book “Clean Code” Robert Martin, the creators of maintainers Selenium, and who knows whom else. I really recommend these online conferences. You can rarely have a chance to attend an offline venue to meet the best in their fields.
Skills and requirements to be a Test Automation Engineer
If you check what are the requirements for a QA Automation Engineer position in different tech companies, usually you’ll get a huge list that includes excellent coding skills, framework design skill, knowledge of manual testing & QA, knowledge of development methodologies, logical and analytical skills, Agile, DevOps, and so on. Basically, it’s a set of tech skills for troubleshooting together with excellent communication skills.
Herman Zubenko, Clearmove’s Lead QA Automation Engineer, has a very similar view:
“A good tester should have a mindset of a tester and the skills of a developer. Therefore, you need to be a tester and a developer at the same time. Also, you should understand the business domain and the theory of testing, so that you don’t automate a random thing, but choose a needed case that will guarantee software quality.”
Why do you like working as a Test Automation Engineer
We also asked our employees to share why they enjoy working with QA automation. Here is what they said:
Anna: The most I enjoy in automation is that, in contrast to manual testing, it provides maximum challenges and minimum routine tasks. All in all, if you possess analytical skills, are interested in the field, and not afraid to learn something new every day and apply it to your work – then QA Automation is for you!
Herman: I like the challenges connected with my job. And the fact that when I speak about it to people that know nothing about testing automation they think I’m a hacker 🙂
At Clearmove different people work with us on various tasks and challenges. It doesn’t matter if you have dozens of years of software development experience or are new in the field (or somewhere in between), so long as you feel passion and motivation, we want to hear from you!
Would you like to work together with Herman and Anna to solve complex problems that will change global mobility forever?