What does a software engineer do?

If both can write code and/or implement testing frameworks, what skills does a software development engineer (SDE) have that a software development engineer in test (SDET/Automation) doesn't?

• What does an automation engineer or SDET need to do to be perceived as an full-fledged SDE ?

• Answer:

  Generally SDETs tend to be more junior. Specifically, well, it varies but basically this is where the "scripting" part of the informal term "scripting language" can come in.  That is, an engineer in test may not even know the primary language of the project he or she is a part of, or may not be particularly proficient in it. Say that the project is a C++ desktop application. There could be a bunch of C++ unit tests that were written by the SDEs. The SDETs might write Python scripts that run the tests by executing standalone binary executables, parse the output, aggregate it, convert it to HTML, and then post it somewhere accessible via the company's intranet, for example. Or they might write Perl to generate huge amounts of test data to use for load testing the C++ application ... or whatever. The point is in this case the SDETs may not know the first thing about C++ but are doing useful work -- this is a common situation.