QA Tester vs. SDET
Both are 'testing' roles, but a QA analyst often tests by hand, writing test cases and exploring the product. An SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) is a developer who writes code to test code: automation frameworks, test infrastructure and CI integration. Pay and interview loops differ a lot, and 'QA Engineer' can mean either.
How to tell them apart on a resume
QA / Manual Tester
Test cases, test plans, exploratory testing, bug reports in Jira, UAT, regression cycles.
SDET
Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, test frameworks written in Java/Python/TypeScript, test runs in CI, code reviews.
The question that settles it
“What share of your testing was automated, and did you write the automation framework yourself or run tests someone else built?”
Read the full definitions
Open the full tool for the other look-alike pairs, role profiles, and the JD decoder.