​The journal of becoming senior tester (1) - The four paths of becoming to senior tester

I have been testing area for almost seven years, and I grow from SDET to SDET II and from SDET II to Senior tester recently. During my career as a professional tester, I was wondering whether I should switch to dev, whether I can find another testing job in other company, whether our SDETs have better career, and whether we (Microsoft) have too many testers. In this series of blogs, I will share my thought to you by discussing how you can becomes senior. The blogs are written for our testers and test managers. I hope my blogs can help you think deeply about testing and tester's career, and best wish you have a better career.

In the blogs, I believe that there are four potential career paths for our SDETs. They are becoming test tools and test framework developer who can develop world class testing tools; becoming testing architect who can lead the testing and quality assurance for the whole team and the whole company; becoming profession QA which knows how to do web, performance, load and stress testing with different kind of testing tools; and becoming the domain expert who can use the product you are testing as the end customer. I will also discuss alternative career paths as an engineering, such as switch to dev or PM, switch the areas you are working on. In the end, I will give suggestions for help you grow as senior engineering (not only be professional as a tester).