What the heck does being a “Test Automation Engineer” even mean?

How to describe what is a test automation engineer to those who don’t know

ME: “Hey, welcome! 👋 My name is Sérgio, and I’m a Test Automation Engineer.”

EVERYONE ELSE (literally): Wow, that’s great, but what the heck does that even mean? What do you do?

Raise your hands if you know the feeling 🙌

Yep, we get that a lot! And, even though that is a weirdo common thing, many of us (me certainly included) still have to take a step back and spin our heads around twice to come up with a proper and concise explanation of what we do.

In a nutshell, what is the value of our work?

Definition of test automation

Test automation is the craft of automating manual processes that assess if a product is doing what it compromises to be doing.

Plain and simple.

So, “What is a test automation engineer?”

Let me introduce myself (again):

ME: “Hey welcome! 👋 My name is Sérgio and I’m a Test Automation Engineer.”

EVERYONE ELSE (literally): Wow, that’s great…