Maybe there are still companies out there that do the defunct record-actions-and-replay approach to automation, but luckily my experience was just as heavy on the engineering side as any of the software engineering work I've done since I "switched". You just don't get as much respect from the software engineer crowd because building CRUD APIs using web frameworks is considered engineering and building an automation framework from scratch is considered QA.

Sorry if I came off on the offensive, just didn't like seeing "engineer" in quotes.

Word! The level of respect that a developer shows towards test and reliability engineering is also a great way to identify skill and experience.

QA needs much more respect. I work with some fantastic qa people and they are meticulous. And between manual and automation I wouldn't ship to production without them

It’s unclear whether this position is for a software engineer performing automation and test infrastructure /continuous delivery / build work / test scripts or if it’s a role limited to only writing tests but if it’s the former I’d agree. Writing great automation has been just as challenging if not more so than writing anything else in my experience. I’ve been involved with making games play themselves in the games industry and it’s challenging and yet the impact with respect to regression testing has been huge. We couldn’t have shipped as fast without it.

Agreed. I've worked for many years as a software engineer, and some of the most challenging stuff I've done has been building robust test automation frameworks. The amount of disrespect QA gets (both those focusing on automation as well as those focusing on manual testing) is disgusting.