I was a software engineer at my previous job. I was mostly unhappy with the environment (lack of challenge). My friend was a recruiter at a company and was tell

I was a software engineer at my previous job. I was mostly unhappy with the environment (lack of challenge). My friend was a recruiter at a company and was telling me about opportunities in said company. One of which was a SDET roll. At first I was hesitant, but it isn't 100% testing. Although, I enjoy the testing aspect. Tbh, the biggest thing was 'getting my foot in the door' and they paid to move me to a location more appealing. But, I've always enjoyed automation (bots, scraping, fuzzing, etc) so it was a good fit for me. The main concern with SDETs is the lack of mobility and lack of definition. Many places I've seen that have SDETs just have a "SDET" roll. Maybe, a lead roll as well. While they would also have SDE 1-5 + lead + management + etc. So people feel there is no growth, you get in, you do your time, you get out. Others are less dependent on the 'engineering' side. At my first job the SDET didn't use visual studio at all, they used automated testing tools, where they drag/dropped crap to make tests.