Functional testers can enhance their roles beyond traditional testing by embracing various strategies that add value to the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Understanding stakeholder perspectives, transitioning to QAOps, and acknowledging customer challenges are crucial for creating robust applications. Testers should engage in code reviews, explore new testing tools, and focus on user experience to ensure quality releases. Involving themselves in user stories, being problem solvers, and learning data science can further expand their impact. Keeping an eye on competition and sidestepping functional testing confines enables testers to contribute significantly to product development and organizational success, with QAOps facilitating a closer integration with DevOps teams for continuous testing.