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Manual Tester → Automation Engineer
Convert existing domain and test-design knowledge into working code, one language and one framework at a time.
Starting level: Manual QA with 1+ year experienceTarget role: Automation EngineerJourney: 4–6 months of consistent practice
Core skills
- Programming fundamentals: variables, collections, loops, functions, OOP
- Locator strategy and DOM reading
- Test structure: setup, action, assertion, teardown
- Version control workflow with branches and pull requests
- Reading and debugging failures from logs and traces
Recommended technologies
- Java or JavaScript/TypeScript
- Selenium or Playwright
- TestNG/JUnit or Playwright Test
- Maven or npm
- Git
- Jenkins or GitHub Actions
Practice labs
- Automate 20 scenarios on a public demo shop end to end
- Rewrite five of your existing manual regression cases as scripts
- Break a passing test deliberately and practise reading the trace
Projects
- Regression suite for a login + cart + checkout journey with reporting
- Data-driven test set reading from CSV or JSON
Interview preparation
- Explain your framework structure in three minutes with a diagram
- Common language questions: collections, exceptions, string handling
- Waits, synchronisation and why a test flaked
Suggested next step
- Automation Tester → Playwright or API specialisation
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