Insights on the Evolving Role and Responsibilities of Test Engineers

Good Monday to everyone – today we welcome Lv Chong‑en from the Technical Expansion R&D Test Group, a testing veteran with seven years of experience, to share practical insights.

He chose testing after being misled by a newspaper ad claiming the field would yield million‑yuan salaries, and over the past seven years his understanding of the testing profession has undergone several transformations.

Four key changes:

1. The first shift was treating bug hunting as a hobby, then realizing manual testing could not meet extreme demands, prompting the adoption of testing tools.

2. The second shift involved immersing in script writing and various testing tools, believing technology was the best way to solve testing problems, leading to high automation output but limited problem‑solving approaches.

3. The third shift focused on quality itself, aiming to improve quality before coding – essentially defect prevention.

4. The fourth shift re‑examined the test engineer’s responsibility: helping projects improve quality .

Understanding the test engineer’s responsibilities

He argues that a test engineer’s role goes beyond testing tasks and can be broken down into several layers of assistance:

Help : In projects, help means identifying others’ problems, clarifying root causes, and collaborating on solutions. Examples include advising product managers on user scenarios, pointing out missing edge cases to developers, and communicating with project managers when delays occur.

Improve Quality : Quality varies by perspective – for testers, a bug‑free online product is ideal; for business, meeting user needs defines quality. Test engineers should consider multiple viewpoints, quantify quality through metrics such as bug count, severity, bug‑trend curves, automation time savings, coverage, and product usage data (PV, DAU).

Improving quality involves process optimization and technical guarantees; he references the team’s “Mobile Testing Pitfall Guide” for deeper details.

How to fulfill the responsibilities

He suggests test engineers should ensure timely releases with no critical bugs, but to enhance personal competitiveness they should also engage in broader activities, such as using product data (PV) to support data‑driven design and participating in interface integration testing, mock creation, and cross‑team collaboration.

Summary

The domestic testing industry started late and gave rise to the “test development” role, which combines testing with development techniques to boost efficiency and accelerate team transformation. While many tools are built, they often fail to solve real testing problems or deliver significant efficiency gains.

Problems identified

1. Test developers lacking deep product knowledge may create tools that do not substantially improve efficiency. 2. Pure technical sharing without practical application yields limited impact. 3. Effective solutions must be quantified, communicated top‑down, and patiently driven to adoption.

Conclusions

1. Collect efficiency pain points and address them with tools or scripts. 2. Learn and apply technology to solve real problems. 3. Follow a three‑handshake approach for technical sharing: share, confirm learning, confirm application. 4. Continuously gather feedback to iterate tools. 5. Quantify the benefits of solutions to ensure they are adopted.