Broadly we can categorize Software testing career as below based on the nature of work done:
There are thousands of Manual testers in market and most of the companies are looking beyond manual testing skills.
Manual Testing
Involves testing the software application with human interaction of software manually without any tool.
2. Automation Testing
Testing the software with help of software tools. Basically the functional automation tools are in scope in this topic and below are high level info of tools available in market today.
Commercial Tools:
QTP
Silk Test
Rational Robot
Skills: VB Scripting for QTP, Tool Knowledge frameworks
Open Source Tools:
Selenium, Watir, Sahi etc
Skills: Core Java, Tool knowledge, Frameworks (like TestNg etc) or any language supported by tool.
Performance Testing
Understanding the capacity of software to sustain and manage huge traffic is important today for various kind of software like web apps, Enterprise software's etc. To understand the performance bench marks performance testing tools are used.
Commercial Tools:
Popular tool is Load Runner or Silk Performer which is commercial tool
Open Source Tools:
Jmeter or WebLoad etc: Open Source Tools
Skills: Networking Concepts, Tool Knowledge Jmeter
Database, ETL and BI testing.
Involve testing of data flow and availability at various check points. This testing is now a day’s taking good response across clients/customer
Skills: Good SQL, Data Base Concepts
Functional QA on Enterprise software like SAP, Oracle etc
Here testing of enterprise application is done where understanding the features and functionality of products are important as these high complex and huge products. One can grow as Business Analyst, Implementation engineer, Product owner upon mastering the product and acquiring domain knowledge.
SDET (Software development engineer in Test)
You might have seen this kind of job title recently, basically this is the role where in both automation and functional software testing is performed.
This is type of role is popular with Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other big MNC’s
Skills: .net, C#, and Microsoft test tools, framework=Glider, Java, Selenium
For more info on Selenium visit http://seleniumhq.org/
If you are good in programming learn at least Core Java and learn Selenium which is in high demand today and very less people are available.
Feel free to reach me in case you have more questions. Please search in LinkedIn or various job sites for the high demand skills in QA/testing
