Software Development Engineer in Test

The Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) position is one of the three core engineering positions at Microsoft, along with Program Manager and Software Development Engineer. All three positions leverage strong computer science engineering skills, with SDETs leveraging their technical and analytical skills as the primary drivers of quality-no small task! Good SDET candidates help shape our products by:

• Participating in design and code inspections.
• Writing infrastructure tools and code to exercise our products.
• Understanding in exquisite detail how customers will use the product.
• Using their test experience to stretch and break the product.

Not everyone is cut out to be an SDET; you need to be structured enough to make sure nothing is missed, creative enough to think like millions of customers, technical enough to write code and design algorithmically beautiful solutions, and articulate enough to let people know what you think!

In most SDET positions, you start by learning about your product and your customers-how else will you know how the product should work? From the beginning, you'll be an integral part of the team that designs/writes the code and also providing feedback on its design. A good SDET will know how to break the software and will anticipate everything that could go wrong by writing detailed test plans that clearly call out the approach to testing and the risks involved. To prevent those possible disasters, you'll be writing code that automatically verifies that if anything does go wrong, you're code will tell us. You might also write code for tools to help find new problems or prevent bugs from happening in the first place. You might have the opportunity to work with "beta" customers before the release to make sure that any issues they have are addressed. As we near our ship date, all eyes will turn to you to make sure that the release of the product that your team created is ready for customers around the world to use! Whether it's an established product that the world relies on or a new technology that could change the face of software, your work will ensure that Microsoft delivers a quality product.

Responsibilities will include:

• Participate in feature development and drive quality into development process
• Test, troubleshoot and critique software components and interfaces in technical depth
• Identify design patterns that are high risk for generating future bugs
• Write and execute test cases that lead to superior testing of all functionality
• Collaborate with PMs and Developers to improve code designs
• Represent test in the evaluation of critical code fixes
• Help determine release readiness for multiple feature areas
• Help with recruitment needs
• Design and develop solutions for test management, execution and reporting as well as frameworks, C# libraries and similar to support high-quality test code

Requirements should include:

• 5+ years industry test and coding experience with demonstrated feature ownership throughout the complete product lifecycle (test collateral including test plans/specifications, test cases, automation, etc)
• 3+ years' experience in strong coding and debugging
• A BA/BS/MS degree or equivalent certification in a Computer Science, Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering.
• Ability to function autonomously and work through ambiguity and rapid change
• Strong communication skills and effective multi-task skills
• Excellent trouble shooting skills

Preferred:

• Web technology knowledge (Silverlight, AJAX, CSS, XML, HTML, Javascript, ISS) and SQL
• Expertise in the areas of API, security, stress, performance testing, and testing distributed systems
• C# development experience would be beneficial

Competencies:

• Deep Technical Testing
• Problem Solving
• Strong Coding Skills
• Passion for Quality
• Customer Focused Innovation
• Cross Group Collaboration
• Microsoft's equal employment opportunities policy