Senior SDET in Hyderabad. I test AI agents in production, and I sit on the panel that interviews SDET candidates.
My degree is in Mechanical Engineering. In my entire career, no interviewer has ever asked me a single question about it.
I started in manual testing, moved into automation deliberately rather than accidentally, and now work as a Senior SDET where the thing under test is an AI agent — output that changes every run, which breaks most of what you were taught about assertions.
The path, roughly: QA team lead at Capgemini, working on kiosk point-of-sale software. Then SDET at Deloitte USI on a tax platform. Now Senior SDET at an AI company, promoted thirteen months in.
Most advice for manual testers moving into automation is either a tool tutorial or a motivational post. Neither one tells you what a hiring panel is looking at, because most people writing it have never sat on one.
Everything here is written from that seat, and from a transition recent enough that I still remember which parts hurt. No affiliate links, no course funnel. If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it.
LinkedIn — where I post twice a week, and the best place to reach me.