Do You Have What It Takes to Become a Software Test Engineer?

The tester? Well, when not considered a mundane secondary role, often performed by the developer as a "necessary evil" between coding assignments, the testing task was often times relegated to the "new guy," the IT apprentice, if you will.

That’s because, in its infancy, testing new software systems was predominantly a manual process, designed to find errors or bugs in the developer’s code. The task was tedious, laborious and routine, often done at the end of the system development process just prior to production implementation. When project schedules got squeezed due to various reasons, it was generally testing that was sacrificed to meet deadlines.

What a difference a decade makes! The Internet revolution has transformed the face of business, creating new and exciting avenues for growth and profit. Along with this growth, rapid technology gains have and are evolving to meet this business transformation. However, with rapid growth also come growing pains.

As a result of this revolution, applications that involve direct and frequent interaction with customers are vital to a company’s success. And stellar software quality is essential for guaranteeing such applications’ acceptance in the marketplace. Inadequate or poor testing is the bane of many a company, leading to poor performing, non-intuitive, error-prone, and/or late products that disappoint customers and diminish a company’s profits, reputation and/or competitive edge.

The problem today lies in the dearth of quality test engineers capable of meeting the new and challenging requirements of product quality. While this is not good news for many in the business community, this is excellent news for those seeking a rewarding, lucrative and challenging career in this emerging and rapidly growing discipline.