We are in the early stages of something like this in my org. QA has been writing tests in some form for a while, and it’s mostly been at a self-led level. We have a senior engineer per-application responsible for tooling and guidance, and the QA testers have been learning Java/script (depending on the application, teams we don’t interface with are writing theirs in C# iirc). With the new year, we are starting a phased initiative to ramp up all of QA to be Software Engineers in Testing - each phase will teach and guide and impart the skills needed to be fully sufficient to write automation tests in tandem with engineers writing features.

It’s an interesting and bold initiative imo, as I’ve often worked at places that let QA do whatever felt best which is good from the standpoint of letting them work within their comfort zone, and it also means that testing will largely plateau. I haven’t seen a real push for automation _not_ come out of the engineering department personally (because I’m the one pushing it every time), though I know this place has at least done some work with various automation systems in the past.