Software test engineering career

During the last two weeks, I talked to a couple of full-time employees to learn how Microsoft tests its software and a career option as a Software Test Engineer. Test engineers write software tests like unit tests, sub-system tests, scenario tests, and vendor tests.
Unit tests are tests written to check how different functions or methods work at the lowest level of abstraction. During a conversation with a former Test engineer, I learned about Test-driven development, where test suites are developed before the actual development of the product. Although test-driven development is highly encouraged, some engineers write tests to verify their product's functionality after the coding.
One importance of Test-driven development is fully understanding various edge cases to consider while developing. Sub-system tests are tests written to cover code shared between different components. A specific type of sub-system testing called cross-platform testing verifies how code behaves on other Excel endpoints like Windows, Android, iOS, Mac, and Office Online. Test engineers also conduct scenario and vendor tests that verify a product's integration behavior. Unlike scenario tests that are usually automated, vendor tests are manual.
I first heard about test-driven design in my Software Design and Implementation course, where we wrote test suites in python. Though I found it challenging to think of the different ways to break code that I had not written, test-driven development helped me think of various edge cases without worrying about technical limitations. Additionally, after developing a test suite, I found the coding and debugging phase easy because I fully understood the project.
In addition to writing tests, test engineers collect data and work on different ways to best display test results to engineers. Even with my little experience with write test suites, I found Software Test engineering an exciting career to explore.

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