Is automation testing a good career?
Automation testing is a potential career option for millions of graduates in India. With over 90 thousand automation test engineers employed in the United States and millions of others worldwide, it has become a go-to career path for graduates ready to invest time, learn the ins and outs of testing, and innovate the "testing methods."
This blog will analyze the current demand and future of automation testing as a career.
What is Automation Testing?
After the developers have pushed the required functionalities into a software product, test engineers should validate that those functionalities work fine without error and that the developed product features match requirements. When the testing process is automated, the test engineer, instead of using the functionalities one by one, runs the test for those functionalities all at once using automation tools, thus executing tasks at a much faster rate.
Automation tester skills
Qa automation tester must be able to create test scripts. And to simplify writing these scripts, they must have basic programming skills.
Other skills a test automation engineer must possess are analytical, logical, problem-solving, and time management skills. All of these are necessary to stay aligned with project needs and innovation in the workflow.
Types of Automation Testing
Broadly saying, there are two types of automation testing:
(1). Functional: Functional automation testing uses automation testing to test functionalities of the built product or software for functionalities that meet the desired business requirements during the product's imagination and its functionalities. For example, developing an HR tech product like the ATS should be able to parse candidates’ resumes efficiently and store structured info as candidate databases for screening and filtering by recruiters.
(2). Non-functional: All other aspects of the product are tested using non-functional automation testing. These can be security, performance, and data storage. It helps ensure the product tops performance in speed, efficiency, and security.
Why Choose a Career in Automation Testing?
Typically, engineering graduates pursue a career in testing. Initially, you will work with manual testing and slowly skill up, learning automation tools and advance in your career as a test automation engineer. One must consider a career in automation testing for the following reasons:
Growing Demand and Job Opportunities
With world economies prioritizing technological growth, software development will likely grow in the coming decades. It will create plenty of job opportunities for test engineers, precisely automation, due to speed and efficiency.
Advantages of Automation Testing
Manual testing needs a test engineer to write the same script and test the same functionalities repeatedly. It becomes repetitive and time-consuming. Automation, thus, helps automate repetitive tasks and reduce time investment, cost, and effort.
Career Path and Growth Opportunities
Typically, junior automation tester is the entry-level position in software testing. You will be writing test scripts and scenarios for product features and design. You will run those tests using the various types of automation testing like smoke, regression, integration, performance tests, etc.
Advancement and Specialization
On career advancement as an automation test engineer, you will move from junior to senior and get promoted to automation architect and automation test lead. With learning and experience in testing engineering, when you mature as an automation tester, you will likely take up the testing process end-to-end, strategizing the approach and execution systematically, leading the junior test engineers.
Collaboration and Integration
Working as an automation engineer will require you to collaborate deeply with the developers, discussing the product features & functionalities and communicating test scenarios, reports, and bugs. You will also collaborate with analysts and other stakeholders to discuss test results and strategize automation.
Also, you will discuss and work on introducing automation to the different stages of software development to make jobs easier and streamline the product development and deployment process.
Automation tester salary in India
As per Ambitionbox, the average annual salary of a test automation engineer in India is Rs 5.6 Lakhs. While in the beginning of their career, an automation test engineer may get on an average of Rs 2.5 Lakhs, as their career advances, the salary might increase to be more than Rs 9 Lakhs or more annually.
Key takeaway
Considering the various advantages, growth prospects and the increasing demand for software development and testing jobs, there will be plenty of testing job vacancies in the future. With continuous learning, advancement and knack for innovating testing automation and approach, it can be a rewarding career option.
