Roles of an SDET

In this posting, I will try to identify primary responsibilities of an SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) in a typical software organizations. Note that the points below are not comprehensive and may differ from one organization to another. At the same time, it will give you brief ideas of what is expected by an SDET. Also, note that the list is not in the order of priority.

1. Programmer: In order to understand the design and code written by a developer, an SDET should be a programmer.
2. Customer advocate: As the name suggests, a good SDET should be a good customer advocate in order to achieve right quality of the product.
3. In-depth knowledge of what is being tested: Yes, this is another important point. Having in-depth knowledge will help finding issues that are overlooked/not-yet looked at the design and development time. This will also help in generating good test plan and a variety of test cases to get more coverage.
4. Know when and where to stop: A tester should know when and where to stop testing. It means that he/she should not stop before the needed point and do not unnecessarily keep on testing too.
5. Clear, concise, and in-time reports of issues: An SDET spends quite long time in the software development life cycle for a particular product/feature. He/she should report all issue in timely manner - should not delay them till the end. Also the reports are clear and concise to pin-point what exactly the problem is, where the problem is found and all related information. This will help a developer to quickly jump to the right part in the product to analyze the issue and helps get the fix quickly.
6. Knowledge of testing areas and techniques of testing: This will help the tester to achieve the breadth of the coverage.
7. Good debugger: SDET/tester is the bridge between product and consumer. When some failure is reported, an SDET should have ability to debug the issue and move in the right direction to identify the issue and report it. 
8. Comparative analyst: This is an optional skill an SDET should have. This will certainly help in the initial stages of the product development. This will help in getting a good design since the beginning.
9. Automation generator: While this vary from role to role, it is always beneficial to have automation of the tests so that time of testing can be saved. To generate automation, again being a programmer is always beneficial.
10. Team player: This is not specific to SDET role, but an essential to it as the testing of a product is a team effort.