What's Really Happening with SDET Right Now
SDET has drifted decisively toward software engineering. Where the title once meant "automation tester who codes well," companies now use it for engineers who build tooling, test infrastructure, and developer-facing quality platforms — and the interview loops moved accordingly, frequently including data-structures rounds and system design alongside test strategy. That is why the band sits above the automation tester band and keeps separating: you are being paid as an engineer whose product happens to be quality infrastructure. The practical consequence is that many strong automation testers apply for SDET roles and fail on rounds they did not know were coming.
What we'd actually recommend
Prepare as a developer who specialises in testing, not as a tester who codes. That means practising real coding problems until you can write clean code under observation, being able to design a test framework on a whiteboard with explicit trade-offs, and having one substantial repository you can walk someone through. Beyond the interview, the SDETs who get promoted are those who build things other engineers voluntarily use — a data-seeding service, a preview environment, a flake dashboard. Building tooling other people depend on is how the role compounds into staff-level pay.
The pitfall: assuming SDET is just a better-paid automation title
Candidates apply for SDET roles expecting a familiar automation interview and hit a coding round with an array manipulation problem or a design round about testing a rate limiter. They then conclude the process was unfair. It is not unfair, it is a different job: SDETs are usually in the same engineering ladder as developers and are evaluated against it. The related misconception is that SDETs write mostly tests — in many organisations they write mostly tools, and reviewers look for exactly that evidence in your work history.