Thanks Reinhardt
TP from this country get the right to fly everything, which is the beauty of the job, trust us.... But it's usually a short-timed assignment (in fact it's probably better, as some would consider themselves as God after some years) and then once with Airbus, it will only be Airbus products !
And that is probably central to the differing perspective various posters here could have. Of course, one should follow one's desired pilot path as much as possible.
I know that very modern airliners are an order of magnitude more systems complex, and I'm sure a total mind capture, for those pilots who enjoy that type of aircraft. I completely respect that, but it's not for me. The apogee of my flight test career will not be in a jet, or a systems complex aircraft, it will probably be in another floatplane, or rag and tube taildragger, and I'm fine with that.
In our evolving aviation industry, there will be a need for test pilots who can evaluate new small aircraft designs as well as large ones. The great challenge is that there is no where near the financial inertia in flight testing modest light aircraft as there is in airliners, helicopters, and military aircraft.
It is less likely that the light aircraft industry will find a large aircraft, fast jet, formally trained "test pilot" who has thousands of hours of experience flying very light aircraft, to undertake flight testing of a mod, or a new aircraft design. For the pilots who do have the flying experience on these types, and varied undercarriage configurations, it is very unlikely that they have come from a career path where formal flight test training was an element.
A generation ago, the light aircraft test pilot could be drawn from a military pilot group with lots of small aircraft experience on light types, but I think not so much these days.
Flight testing is a larger "industry" than just big, complex aircraft, and therefore "test pilot" is a much more varied role than one type of pilot could be expected to accomplish....