TN application with BTECH in Electrical Eng and Role - Software eng in Test

sommitra

sommitra

New Member
Hi fellow members,

I have been offered a contract position with one of the Fortune 100 client in US and the staffing agency is planning to send the Offer letter, Support letter and the Client letter.

For the support letter they wanted me to confirm if I should go with 'Engineer' or 'Computer Systems Analyst' category.

Here are my job description for the role

Degree - Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering (Evaluated by WES US)

Role - Software Engineer in test

Job Description:

  • Work with your agile delivery team, chapter lead and QA team members to understand domain and accelerate their test automation strategy to enable delivery velocity.
  • Strong contributor with a collaborative work style, and you enjoy designing and implementing efficient and effective test strategies
  • Testing distributed applications at multiple layers of the technology stack using a variety of automation frameworks.
  • Validation knowledge of CI/CD principles using Jenkins and Git and can make recommendations on how to best include test automation into pipelines
  • Work in a team of SDET’s focused on automation standard methodologies and building reusable artifacts.
  • Work in an Agile environment and believe in the value of t-shaped squad members.
Does this title & job description and the bachelor of technology in Electrical engineering align more with "Engineer" category or CSA.

If you could please chime in, that would be great.
 
Tough call. SDET duties actually fall -very- squarely in the "CSA" category, as per OOH.

However, 2 factors lean me towards trying "Engineering" category:

1. Your degree has the word "Engineer" in it.
2. CBP began regularly accepting software professionals under "Engineering" category about 5-7 years ago; some lawyers are steering that way.

Either way: you might want to clean up your job duties to make sure it has stronger alignment with whatever category you pick. You need to walk that line between honestly representing your duties, but focusing the aspects which clearly match whatever category you seek.

Back in my day, the OOH was the guide for what CBP supposedly compared job duties against to determine category. It might still be.

The job description here is a job posting, not a list of job duties. Once you throw out the vague fluff like "strong contributor..." and "work in a team..." you will see there's very actual TASKS listed. I can't speak for how officers will react, but if I saw this on a resume, I'd be left wondering "what did you actually spend your time producing?"

The one time I tried to pass off that vague stuff on a TN application, the very nice, patient border officer called me on my B.S.

In your shoes, I'd spend the money to get a TN specialist to draft your support letter, as well as advise the category. The best guidance will come from someone who deals with TN applications on a daily or weekly basis, and thus, knows how the CBP is currently adjudicating.
 
@grant2 Appreciate your reply.

You are correct, I put the job description and not job duties. To cut the fluff out, here is the actual job duties and I believe it aligns with the Engineer category because there will be a percentage of coding required for the role.

Job Duties:

  • Design, develop, and maintain comprehensive automated test suites for APIs and internal platforms.
  • Architect, review, and improve test automation infrastructure.
  • Develop reusable engineering artifacts and solutions for generic test data management.
  • Lead technical initiatives for quality engineering and support iterative product delivery.
  • Integrate automation tools with CI/CD pipelines for efficient deployment and testing.
  • Collaborate on internal tooling capabilities
  • Apply object-oriented design methodology and engineering best practices.
 
@grant2 - it went pretty well. Engineer category it was but there was a thorough check. Had to wait for than an hour. Started working.from last week. Cheers!
 
Hi I am in a similar situation. I have a BTech in Electircal and Electronics and I got a job offer for a data quality analyst. Can I apply for TN with the same job title or requets the employer to have it as a Data Quality Engineer?
 
qaengan said:
Hi I am in a similar situation. I have a BTech in Electircal and Electronics and I got a job offer for a data quality analyst. Can I apply for TN with the same job title or requets the employer to have it as a Data Quality Engineer?
Click to expand...
That is a difficult question to answer. If your roles and responsibility aligns with engineering role then you can change it or Data Quality analyst aligns more with CSA role so you can try with CSA category.
 
sommitra said:
@grant2 - it went pretty well. Engineer category it was but there was a thorough check. Had to wait for than an hour. Started working.from last week. Cheers!
Click to expand...
Great! My first few times I was waiting a while. I think after a few approvals, the officers get more relaxed; it seemed to take about 20 minutes the last few times.
qaengan said:
Hi I am in a similar situation. I have a BTech in Electircal and Electronics and I got a job offer for a data quality analyst. Can I apply for TN with the same job title or requets the employer to have it as a Data Quality Engineer?
Click to expand...
"Data Quality Engineer" is not a TN category.

You can have whatever internal job title the company wants to give you; but you (probably) need to apply under either "Engineer" or "Computer Systems Analyst" category.

You can either hire an experienced lawyer to help guide you and/or you can read the OOH for both categories to make a case for how your job duties align with 1 or the other. Given that your certification doesn't have either "engineer" nor "computer" in the title, I imagine you'll be well served to include a transcript and to explain how your specific course load primarily aligns with your chosen category.
 
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