Hi - I am new to this board and forgive me if this is the wrong thread to post this.

I am currently a Software QA Engineer. Started off as manual with some automation, but recently I have been getting into more automation eventually trying to replace the current automation framework and switch from QTP to Selenium. The framework will include the ability to run smoke tests as part of our continuous integration, have everything (unit tests, integration tests, regression tests) housed under Visual Studio for better collaboration between Developers and QA, etc. That is what I am working on now.

Anyway, I have been presented with an opportunity to move to a Release Engineering position within the company. I want to stay with doing programming of some sort. Meaning I am currently using C#, but I hear with a lot of Release Eng jobs, for the automation purposes, I would be using more scripting languages Perl, Bash, etc, which is fine with me. They say it is a really technical job, which is what I want. I want to ensure that I am still working on the QA project, but also get other languages and technical stuff under my belt which would make me more marketable.

Is it a good move to go to Release Engineering? I want to hear your opinion. I want to make sure I am making the right move.

Thank you

P.S. - Oh and the salary's I have seen, at least in the Boston area are not too bad also I've seen someone with at least 3 -5 years experience is making between $120 - $140k