Owen Carter

Background

About Owen Carter

Software is at the very centre of our lives; it’s on our phones, it’s on the web, it’s our home personal assistant and it’s now driving our cars. How bad would your day be if suddenly that software was updated and you couldn’t call for help, none of your reminders went off and your car wouldn’t start due to a software fault. If your answer to the above is very bad; then like me, you feel testing is a core value when developing software. My role as Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) is to approach testing with the same passion and calibre as a developer has for building API’s and clients; its not just code, it’s a lifestyle, we live and breathe it. Once a full stack developer building CRUD screens and wiring up back-end API’s; now I focus on the process ensuring quality throughout our value stream in CI/CD. My work tends to be primarily building tests at the Dev & QA level, whether it’s unit and integration or API and E2E. The ownership of testing no matter the type lives within the whole dev team and building stronger testing together Is the way forward. We are one team not just Dev and QA throwing our problems over the wall and where we can help one another we should. So, what’s the difference between an Automation Engineer and an SDET- An SDET builds test code to the quality of a developer; an automation engineer writes E2E blind and unaware of great dev principles and approaches like SOLID, YAGNI, DRY, WET, Atomic, TDD, BDD etc- An SDET Solves problems in less code that is well read and uses the best parts of the language like deconstruction in node on JSON or ES6 style async await; they may even use events to handle complex parts of the test cycle such as task in cypress to emit lighthouse reports for each page of your site- An automation engineer solves your problem, but an SDET ensures we are solving the right problem in test- An automation engineer relies on a testing framework to exist that they are familiar with, whereas an SDET researches the best for your company and implements it under the principles that follow best practice for that tech stack- An SDET is an avid reader of thought-works & the latest trends in software testing; whether that's testing pyramids or ice cream cones.