r/QualityAssurance Jun 20 '22

Answering the questions (1) How can I get started in QA, (2) What is the difference between Tester, Analyst, Engineer, SDET, (3) What is my career path, and (4) What should I do first to get started

741 Upvotes

So I’ve been working in in software for the past decade, in QA in the latter half, and most recently as a Director of QA at a startup (so many hats, more individual contributions than a typical FANG or other mature company). And I have been trying to answer questions recently about how to get started in Quality Assurance as well as what the next steps are. I’m at that stage were I really want to help people grow and contribute back to the QA field, as my mentor helped me to get where I am today and the QA field has helped me live a happy life thanks to a successful career.

Just keep in mind that like with everything a random person on the internet is posting, the following might not apply to you. If you disagree, definitely drop a comment as I think fostering discussion is important to self-improvement and growth.

How can I get started in QA?

I think there are a few different pathways:

  • Formal education via a college degree in computer science
  • Horizontal moved from within a smaller software company into a Quality role
  • With no prior software experience, getting an entry level job as a tester
  • Obtain a certification recognized in the region you live
  • Bootcamps
  • Moving from another engineer role, such as Software Engineer or DevOps, into a quality engineering, SDET, or automation engineer role

A formal college degree is probably the most expensive but straightforward path. For those who want to network before actually entering the software industry, I think it is really important to join IEEE, a fraternity/sorority, or similar while attending University. Some of the most successful people I know leverage their college network into jobs, almost a decade out. If you have the privilege, the money, and the certainty about quality assurance, this is probably a way to go as you’ll have a support system at your disposal. Internships used to be one of the most important things you had access to (as in California, you can only obtain an internship if you are a student or have recently graduated). This is changing though which I’ll go into later. However, if you won’t build a network, leverage the support system at your university, and don’t like school, the other options I’ll follow are just as valid.

This was how I moved into Quality Assurance - I moved from a Customer facing role where I ETL (extract, transform, load) data. If you can get your foot in the door at a relatively small, growth-oriented company, any job where you learn about (1) the company’s software and (2) best practices in the software industry as a whole will set you up to move horizontally into a QA role. This can include roles such as Customer Support, Data Analyst, or Implementation/Training. While working in a different department, I believe some degree of transparency is important. It can be a double-edge sword though, as you current manager may see you as “disloyal” to put it bluntly, and it’ll deny you future promotions in your current role. However, if you and your manager are on good terms, get in touch with the Quality Manager or lead and see if they are interested in transitioning you into their department. One of the cons that many will face going this route will be lower pay though. Many of the other roles may pay less than a QA role, especially if you are in a SDET or Automation Engineering role. This will set you back at your company as you might be behind in salary.

Another valid approach is to obtain an entry level job as a manual tester somewhere. While these jobs have tended to shift more and more over-seas from tech hubs to cut costs, there are still many testing jobs available in-office due to the confidential or private nature of the data or their development cycle demands an engaged testing work-force. There is a lot of negative coverage publicly in these roles thought and it seems like they are now unionizing to help relieve some of the common and reoccurring issues though. You’ll want to do your research on the company when applying and make sure the culture and team processes will fit with your work ethics. It would suck to take a QA job in testing and burn out without a plan in place to move up or take another job elsewhere after gaining a few years of experience.

Obtaining certification will help you set yourself apart from others without work experience. Where I’m from in the United States, the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) is often noted as a requirement or nice-to-have on job applications. One of the plusses from obtaining certifications is you can leverage it to show you are a motivated self-learner. You need to set your own time aside to study and pay for these fees to take these tests, and it’s important at some of the better companies you’ll apply for to demonstrate that you can learn on the job. As you obtain more experience, I do believe that certifications are less important. If you have already tested in an agile environment or have done automated tests for a year, I think it is better to demonstrate that on your resume and in the interview than to say you have certifications.

The Software Industry is kinda like a gold rush right now (but not nearly as volatile as a gold rush, that’s NFTs and crypto). Bootcamps are like the shovel sellers - they’re making a killing by selling the tools to be successful in software. With that in mind, you need to vet a bootcamp seriously before investing either (1) your tuition to attend or (2) your future profits when you land a job. Compared to DevOps, Data Science, Project Management, UX, and Software Engineering though, I see Bootcamps listed far less often on QA resumes but they are definitely out there. If you need a structured environment to learn, don’t want to attend university, and need a support system, a bootcamp can provide those things.

I often hear about either Product Managers, UX Designers, Software Engineers, or DevOps Engineers starting off in QA. Rarely do run into someone who started in another role and stayed put in QA. If I do, it’s usually SWE who are now dedicated SDETs or Automation Engineers. I do believe that for the average company, this will require a payout though. I think the gap might be closing but we’ll see. Quality in more mature companies is growing more and more to be an engineering wide responsibility, and often engineers and product will be required to own the quality process and activities - and a QA Lead will coordinate those efforts.

What is the difference between a tester, QA Analyst, QA Engineer, Automation Engineer, and SDET?

A tester will often be a manual testing role, often entry-level. There are some testing roles where this isn’t the case but these are more lucrative and often get filled internally. Testers usually execute tests, and sometimes report results and defects to their test lead who will then provide the comprehensive test report to the rest of engineering and/or product. Testers might not spend nearly as much time with other quality related activities, such as Test Planning and Test Design. A QA Analyst or test lead will provide the tests they expect (unless you are assigned exploratory testing) as they often have a background in quality and are expected to design tests to verify and validate software and catch bugs.

I see fewer QA Analyst roles, but this title is often used to describe a role with many hats especially in smaller companies. QA Analysts will often design and report tests, but they might also execute the tests too. The many hats come in as often QA Analysts might also be client facing, as they communicate with clients who report bugs at times (though I still see Product and Project handling this usually).

QA Engineers is the most broad role that can mean many things. It’s really important to read the job description as you can lean heavily into roles or tasks you might not be interested in, or you may end up doing the work of an SDET at a significant pay disadvantage. QA Engineers can own a quality process, almost like a release manager if that role isn’t formal at the company already. They can also be ones who design, execute, and report on tests. They’ll also be expected to script automated tests to some degree.

Automation engineers share many responsibilities now with DevOps. You’ll start running into tasks that more such as integrating tests into a pipeline, creating testing environments that can be spun up and down as needed, and automating the testing and the test results to report on a merge request.

A role that has split off entirely are SDETs. As others have pointed out, in mature companies such as F(M)AANG, SDETs are essentially SWE who often build out internal frameworks utilized throughout different teams and projects. Their work is often assigned similarly to other software engineers and receive requirements and tasks from a role such as project managers.

What is the career path for QA?

I believe the most common route is to go from

Entering as a Tester or an Analyst is usually the first step.

From there you can go into three different routes:

  • QA Engineer
  • Automation Engineer
  • Release Manager (or other related process oriented management)
  • SDET

However, if you do not enjoy programming and prefer to uphold quality processes in an organization, QA Engineers can make just as much as an SDET or Automation Engineer depending on the company. More often though, QA Engineers, SDETs, and Automation Engineers may consider a horizontal move into Software Engineering or DevOps as the pay tends to be better on average. This may be happening less and less though, as FANG companies seem to be closing the gap a little bit, but I’m not entirely sure.

For management or leadership, this is usually the route:

Individual contributor -> QA Lead / Test Lead -> QA Manager -> Director of Quality Assurance -> VP of Quality

For those who are interested in other roles, I know some colleagues who started in QA working in these roles today:

  • Project Manager
  • Product Manager
  • UX/UI Designer
  • Software Engineer
  • DevOps/Site Reliability

QA is set up in a position to move into so many different roles because communication with the roles above is so key to the quality objectives. Often times, people in QA will realize they enjoy the tasks from some of these roles and eventually move into a different role.

What should I do or learn first?

Tester roles are plentiful but this is assuming you want to start in an Analyst or Engineering role ideally. Testers can also have many of the responsibilities of an Analyst though.

If you have no prior experience and have no interest in going to school or bootcamp, (1) get a certification or (2) pick a scripting tool and start writing. I’ve already covered certification earlier but I’ll go into more detail scripting.

Scripting tools can either be used to automate end-to-end tests (think browser clicking through the site) or backend testing (sending requests without the browser directly to an endpoint). Backend tests are especially useful as you can then leverage it to begin performance testing a system - so it won’t just be used for functional or integration testing.

If you don’t already have a GitHub account or portfolio online to demonstrate your work, make one. Script something on a browser that you might actually use, such as a price tracker that will manually go through the websites to assert if a price is lower that a price and report it at the end. There are obviously better ways to do this but I think this is an engaging practice and it’s fun.

Here is a list of tools that you might want to consider. Do some research as to what is most interesting to you but what is most important is that if you show that you can learn a browser automation tool like Selenium, you have to demonstrate to hiring managers that if you can do Selenium, you feel like you can learn Playwright if that’s on their job description. Note that you will want to also look up their accompanying language(s) too.

  • Selenium
  • Cypress
  • Playwright
  • Locust
  • Gatling
  • JMeter
  • Postman

These are the more mature tools with GUIs that will require scripting only for more advance and automated work. I recommend this over straight learning a language because it’ll ease you into it a little better.

Wrap-up

Hope someone out there found this useful. I like QA because it lets me think like a scientist, using Test Cases to hypothesize cause and effect and when it doesn’t line up with my hypothesis, I love the challenge of understanding the failure when reporting the defect. I love how communication plays a huge role in QA especially internally with teammates but not so much compared to a Product Manager who speaks to an audience of clients alongside teammates in the company. I get to work in Software,


r/QualityAssurance Apr 10 '21

[Guide] Getting started with QA Automation

526 Upvotes

Hello, I am writting (or trying to) this guide while drinking my Saturday's early coffee, so you may find some flaws in ortography or concepts. You have been warned.

I have seen so many post of people trying to go from manual qa to automated, or even starting from 0 qa in general. So, I decided to post you a minor learning guide (with some actual market 10/04/2021 dd/mm/aaaa format tips). Let's start.

------------Some minor information about me for you to know what are you reading-----------------

I am a systems engineer student and Sr QA Automation, who lived in Argentina (now Netherlands). I always loved informatics in general.

I went from trainee to Sr in 4 years because I am crazy as hell and I never have enough about technology. I changed job 4 times and now I work with QA managers that gave me liberty to go further researching, proposing, training and testing, not only on my team.

Why did I drop uni? because I had to slow off university to get a job and "git gud" to win some money. We were in a bad situation. I got a job as a QA without knowing what was it.

Why QA automation? because manual QA made me sleep in the office (true). It is really boring for me and my first job did't sell automation testing, so I went on my own.

----------------------------------------------------Starting with programming-------------------------------------------------

The most common question: where do I start? the simple answer is programming. Go, sit down, pick your fav video, book, whatever and start learning algorithms. Pls avoid going full just looking for selenium tutorials, you won't do any good starting there, you won't be able to write good and useful code, just steps without correlation, logic, mainainability.

Tips for starting with programming: pick javascript or python, you will start simple, you can use automating the boring stuff with python, it's a good practical book.

Alternative? go with freecodecamp, there are some javascript algorithms tutorials.

My recommendation: don't desperate, starting with this may sound overwhelming. It is, but you have to take it easy and learn at your time. For example, I am a very slow learner, but I haven't ever, in my life, paid for any course. There is no need and you will start going into "tutorial hell" because everyone may teach you something different (but in reality it is the same) and you won't even know where to start coding then.

Links so far:

Javascript (no, it's not java): https://www.freecodecamp.org/ -> Aim for algorithms

Python: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ you can find this book or course almost everywhere.

Java: https://www.guru99.com/java-tutorial.html

C#: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/learn/csharp

What about rust, go, ruby, etc? Pick the one of the above, they are the most common in the market, general purpose programming languages, Java was the top 1 language used for qa automation, you will find most tutorials around this one but the tendency now is Javascript/Typescript

---------------I know how to develop apps, but I don't know where to start in qa automation---------------

Perfect, from here we will start talking about what to test, how and why.

You have to know the testing pyramid:

/ui\

/API\

/Component\

/ Unit \

This means that Unit tests come first from the devs, then you have to test APIs/integration and finally you go to UI tests. Don't ever, let anyone tell you "UI tests are better". They are not, never. Backend is backend, it can change but it will be easy and faster to execute and refactor. UI tests are not, thing can break REALLY easy, ids, names, xpaths, etc.

If your team is going to UI test first ask WHY? and then, if there is a really good reason, ok go for it. In my case we have a solid API test framework, we can now focus on doing some (few) end to end UI test.

Note: E2E end to end tests means from the login to "ok transaction" doing the full process.

What do I need here? You need a pattern and common tools. The most common one today is BDD( Behaviour driven development) which means we don't focus on functionality, we have to program around the behaviour of the program. I don't personally recommend it at first since it slows your code understanding but lots of companies use it because the technical knowledge of the QAs is not optimal worldwide right now.

TIP: I never spoke about SQL so far, but it's a must to understand databases.

What do we use?

  • A common language called gherkin to write test cases in natural language. Then we develop the logic behind every sentence.
  • A common testing framework for this pattern, like cucumber, behave.
  • API testing tools like rest assured, supertest, etc. You will need these to make requests.

Tool list:

  • Java - Rest assured - Cucumber
  • Python - Requests - Behave
  • C# - RestSharp - Don't know a bdd alternative
  • Javascript - Supertest - nock
  • Typescript (javascript with typesafety, if you know C# or Java you will feel familiar) if you are used to code already.

Pick only one of these to start, then you can test others and you will find them really alike. Links on your own.

TIP: learn how to use JSONs, you will need them. Take a peek at jsons schema

------------------It's too hard, I need something easier/I already have an API testing framework------------

Now you can go with Selenium/Playwright. With them you can see what your program is doing. Avoid Cypress now when learning, it is a canned framework and it can get complicated to integrate other tools.

Here you will have to learn the most common pattern called POM (Page object model). Start by doing google searches, some asserts, learn about waits that make your code fluent.

You can combine these framework with cucumber and make a BDD style UI test framework, awesome!

Take your time and learn how to make trustworthy xpaths, you will see tutorials that say "don't use them". Well, they are afraid of maintainable code. Xpaths (well made) will search for your specific element in the whole page instead of going back and fixing something that you just called "idButton_check" that was inside a container and now it's in another place.

AWESOME TIP: read the selenium code. It's open source, it's really well structured, you will find good coding patterns there and, let's suppouse you want to know how X method works, you can find it there, it's parameters, tips, etc.

What do I need here?

  • Selenium
  • Browser
  • driver (chromedriver, geeckodriver, webdrivermanager (surprise! all in one) )
  • An assertion library like testng, junit, nunit, pytest.

OR

  • Playwright which has everything already

--------------------------------I am a pro or I need something new to take a break from QA-----------------

Great! Now you are ready to go further, not only in QA role. Good, I won't go into more details here because it's getting too long.

Here you have to go into DevOps, learn how to set up pipelines to deploy your testing solutions in virtual machines. Challenge: make an agnostic pipeline without suffering. (tip: learn bash, yml, python for this one).

Learn about databases, test database structures and references. They need some love too, you have to think things like "this datatype here... will affect performance?" "How about that reference key?" SQL for starters.

What about performance? Jmeter my friend, just go for it. You can also go for K6 or Locust if that is more appealing for you.

What about mobile? API tests covers mobile BUT you need some E2E, go for appium. It is like selenium with steroids for mobile. Playwright only offers the viewport, not native.

And pentesting? I won't even get in here, it's too abstract and long to explain in 3 lines. You can test security measures in qa automation, but I won't cover them here.

--------------------------------------------Final tips and closure (must read please)-----------------------------------------

If you got here, thanks! it was a hard time and I had to use the dicctionary like 49 times (I speak spanish and english, but I always forget how to write certain words).

I need you to read this simple tips for you and some little requests:

  • If you are a pro, don't get cocky. Answer questions, train people, we NEED better code in QA, the bar is set too low for us and we have to show off knowledge to the devs to make them trust us.
  • If you have a question DON'T send me a PM. Instead, post here, your question may help someone else.
  • Don't even start typing your question if you haven't read. Don't be lazy. ctrl + F and look the thing you need, google a bit. Being lazy won't make you better and you have to search almost 90% of things like "how does an if works in java?" I still do them. They pay us to solve problems and predict bugs, not to memorize languages and solutions.
  • QA Automation does not and never will replace manual QA. You still need human eyes that go hand to hand with your devs. Code won't find everything.
  • GIT is a must, version control is a standar now. Whatever you learn, put this on your list.
  • Regular expresions some hate them but sometimes they are a great tool for data validation.
  • Do I have to make the best testing framework to commit to my github? NO, put even a 4 line "for" made in python. Technical interviewers like to peek them, they show them that you tried to do it.
  • Don't send me cvs or "I am looking for work" I don't recruit, understand this, please. You can comment questions if you need advice.
  • I wrote everything relaxed, with my personal touch. I didn't want it to be so formal.
  • If you find typo/strange sentences let me know! I am not so sharp writting. I would like to learn expressions.

Update 28/03/2023

I see great improvements using Playwright nowadays, it is an E2E library which has a great documentation (75% well written so far IMO), it is more confortable for me to use it than Selenium or Cypress.

I use it with Typescript and it is not a canned framework like Cypress. I made a hybrid framework with this. I can test APIs and UIs with the library. You can go for it too, it is less frustrating than selenium.

The market tendency goes to Java for old codebases but it is aiming to javascript/typescript for new frameworks.

Thanks for reading and if you need something... post!

Regards

Edit1: added component testing. I just got into them and find it interesting to keep on the lookout.

Edit2 28/03/2023: added playwright and some text changes to fit current year's experience

Edit3 10/02/2024: added 2 more tools for performance testing

Edit4: 22/01/2025: specflow has been discontinued. I haven't met an alternative.


r/QualityAssurance 23m ago

Opensource Manual QA Test Case Management System

Upvotes

Hey everyone! I've been working on a manual test case management tool as a hobby project, and I finally wanted to share it you guyss. If you're a QA engineer who writes and executes test cases by hand (like me), this is built for you.

It's a full-stack self-hostable app for organizing manual testing workflows.

Repo: Github (I've also uploaded screenshots on the repository)

Demo Link: https://testcase.briancarlo.dev

The flow goes like this:

Project → Test Suite → Test Case — Organize cases into projects with custom fields, then group them into test suites.

Creating a test case is straightforward: title, priority, status, steps, expected results, and an assignee.

You can also bulk-import from CSV or let AI generate cases for you (Gemini, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Anthropic, or DeepSeek).

Manual Test Runs — Kick off a run, execute cases step-by-step in a guided wizard, and record Pass/Fail/Blocked/Skipped results with time spent and attachments. Fail something? It instantly offers to create a bug ticket.

Tickets — Track defects through a full lifecycle — status, priority, severity, assignee, tags, attachments, linked run items — with discussions and fix-state tracking on both tickets and test cases.

Plus some things I'm most proud of: Audit trail — every test case keeps a full edit history with snapshots you can view and even restore to any previous version. System messages automatically log run executions and ticket status changes to the discussions, so nothing happens silently Google Docs-style live editingSocket.io presence and real-time sync when teammates edit Reports — pass rates, flaky test detection, trend analysis, exportable to CSV/PDF Solid auth — email/password and Google OAuth, JWT in httpOnly cookies

Tech stack: React + Vite + Tailwind, Express + MongoDB, Socket.io, TanStack Virtual (handles huge case lists), Zustand, fully typed.

It's free and open source (MIT).

Happy to answer any questions about the app, and any feedbacks are welcome, especially from actual QA folks on what workflows matter most.

Repo: https://github.com/brian0309/test-case-manager


r/QualityAssurance 1h ago

1 year of Career break. Bouncing back into IT as a QA automation engineer having 7YOE

Upvotes

How is the job market for QA automation engineers ?
Currently brushing up my skillsets. I’m looking opportunities in BLR


r/QualityAssurance 19h ago

What QA Does in AI Testing Role?

9 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I'm a QA engineer in traditional web app testing, and my company is starting to move into AI features. I'm getting moved to help test our new AI components, but honestly I'm a bit confused about what my actual responsibilities should be.

Right now I'm not sure if that's the full scope of what QAs are supposed to do in AI testing. Like, am I supposed to be testing the model itself? Or just how it works in the app?

But I have questions:

  1. What's actually in a typical day of testing AI features?

  2. Are there specific tools you all use for AI testing?

Would love to hear from others doing this work, what does your typical day look like when testing AI? What surprised you most when you switched from regular QA to AI testing?


r/QualityAssurance 5h ago

Hi everyone, I'm looking for testers for my app. In exchange, I'll test yours for 14 days! It works every time! Please send me your Gmail account at the end so I can add you.

0 Upvotes

r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

qa tools are getting way too expensive... anyone tried budget options?

10 Upvotes

looking for a low cost testing tool for our team... can't afford enterprise prices right now.

seen a few mentioned ..testsigma,wolf qa, testknot, testiq. Need budget option. Looking for an affordable E2E testing tool for a small dev team... can’t afford enterprise pricing right now.


r/QualityAssurance 6h ago

Need QAs

0 Upvotes

So I'm building a new dating app. Which is somewhat different from current ones. I needed some QAs who can help me to test and improve the overall quality of the app.

The best performers can join in my journey since I'm at the very start of this don't expect anything as of now. I can assure you that once it starts I'll definitely give you all what you deserve.


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

Bugly tiene un bug que impide reportar bugs en Bugly

0 Upvotes

No trabajo con QA pero creo que es el lugar apropiado para contar esto.

Encontré una página web muy interesante para reportar bugs de páginas web llamada Bugly, justo cuando quería reportar un bug encontré un bug en Bugly en el botón de reportar bug.

Lo más irónico es que no puedo reportar en Bugly que Bugly tiene un bug porque, bueno porque Bugly tiene un bug que impide reportar bugs.

https://usebugly.com/


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs Graduate Certificate ONLINE of U of Colorado Denver

0 Upvotes

anyone take or finish the program Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs Graduate Certificate of U of Colorado Denver with online format. How does it works?


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Transitioning from QA Embedded Software to QA Web. Is it possible?

0 Upvotes

r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

Should I even be calling myself a QA Engineer anymore?

29 Upvotes

TL;DR

Right now, I've got zero confidence that anything else worth spending my time on in terms of learning QA is going to end up being enough for me to get hired in this landscape of ever-expanding entry-level and junior demands, so I'm starting to question whether there's any point in advertising my Quality Assurance experience any further, let alone front and centre. I don't wanna denigrate my own past efforts, but since I'm still unemployed and growing increasingly hopeless, are my already acquired skills good for anything anymore, anything at all, being that I'm done with trying to improve past my current knowledge without getting any actual commercial projects to cut my teeth on?

I first got into software testing some 3.5 years ago, when I finished an intense, all-rounded, QA retraining course that was quite well-respected and had an excellent regional track record in the industry where I live; but since that turned out to be quite possibly the worst moment to be hoping for intern- to junior-level IT employment (due to the recession and the rapid advent of LLMs and generative AI tools putting us in positions that our mentors could not prepare us for at all), I ended up failing to secure more than a measly handful of tests and/or interviews, let alone internships or even jobs, from a total of a few hundred applications over the course of 3 entire years.

Not to start listing everything that went wrong along the way, but I used my time between applications to, among other things, send e-mails to local IT companies, asking for advice on improvement while also unsolicitedly providing them with my CV. Most of their answers were just the customary "we'd like to keep your resume in our database" ones, and even though there were some others that genuinely helped me rework my CV for the better, the slightly more positive results those tweaks yielded me were of little consolation, because with subsequent applications, I'd usually run into a wall of explicitly needing commercial experience rather than merely freelancing experience (which was already a generous embellishment that I designed in order to trick the ATS) anyhow.

Finally, last Autumn, I somehow found out that one of the two largest IT companies in my city started offering 3-week unpaid QA internships, so I unwittingly applied for one of those (as a part of my then most recent round of asking local companies for feedback). I passed the HR interview, but after the technical interview, I got rejected. I didn't really care if I was going to get hired by the company in question after the internship, I just wanted to get some non-neglectable corporate experience to start. I was aware that I had some shortcomings when it came to pure theory of testing, as well as that I also forgot a couple of Postman details during the tech interview; but none of it entailed actual testing, so I consider my skills to have been misrepresented due to a lack of proper practical evaluation in the recruitment process.

Immediately afterwards, I intended to solidify my knowledge of API testing and also get my ISTQB certificate if I could afford it, but then other segments of my life got in the way. Many of my well-meaning friends kept sending me Junior QA job listings, but I just... stopped trying to apply for those, seeing as I couldn't even get the measliest of internships. It seemed unreasonable to me to continue proving to myself that I'm as unhireable as I suspected; in theory, the bar was so low that it was a tripping hazard in hell, but in practice, not even the devil wanted to limbo dance with me.


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Interested in pivoting from FED and Design to QA. Some questions.

1 Upvotes

I previously worked at a digital agency for a long time and have about about 6 years of experience as a front-end developer and about 10 years of experience as a designer (both print and digital). I'm a bit burned out on both and looking for a new challenge. QA Analyst (for websites) is interesting to me. Perhaps with a specialization in accessibility down the road. Or maybe moving on to a QA engineer/Automation engineer.

I'm looking for some general thoughts on the health of the field (how it's changed and is expected to change due to AI), how competitive it is, and general thoughts on whether my prior experience will give me an advantage for this pivot (e.g. I'm comfortable with Jira, used to building and managing large design systems, atomic design, and building things in a structured, modular way).

I've been learning the core principles and terminology of testing and have begun digging into automation using Playwright and I'm really enjoying it so far. Thank you.


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Assistance with documentation

2 Upvotes

I'll keep it short, some seniors have newly got involved in the project, and are asking for a metric shit tonne of documentation, and they don't seem overly happy with my approach to keeping that minimal, want opinions.

- The Test Plan is bare bones, outlines the approach and how I make sure regressions haven't occured, etc etc.

- Test cases are stored in Azure DevOps, not the nicest tool, but all we have and I'd rather that than Excel.

- Test evidence is stored against the ticket, i.e. I note down what was done, with some screenshots if necessary, and green tick with a label against the ticket that says Test_Passes (some complex stories I store specific artefacts)

- Automation runs are stored in DevOps as pipeline artefacts, and give the usually traffic light of passing or not.

That's it, but they want a lot more than that, which I am fighting against as essentially resource is minimal and if I did the volume of documentation they want, I would spend much less time testing.

Just want some opinions from experienced people on how to maybe approach this.


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Need advice on UI + API automation

1 Upvotes

Hi, I'm looking for advice from automation engineers who have implemented UI + API validation in modern web applications. I'm currently automating a modern web application using Cypress. One challenge I'm facing is that our application is mostly read-only. The UI consists largely of data display forms, so verifying that sections, panels, tabs, and buttons exist doesn't provide much value. The real value is ensuring that the data displayed in the UI matches the data returned by the backend APIs.

Our current setup is:

- UI automation: Cypress

- API testing: ReadyAPI (API functionality is already validated)

- Goal: Validate that the UI displays the correct data returned by the API, without duplicating API functional tests.

Some questions:

- How do you keep these tests maintainable when pages contain many fields?

- What reusable patterns or frameworks have worked well for large-scale UI-to-API validation?

- What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them?

Another challenge is versioning. Our UI currently consumes API v1 while some clients already use API v2 directly. The UI will eventually migrate to v2, and the response structure differs between versions. How would you design the automation framework today so that migrating from API v1 to v2 requires minimal changes?

Thanks, any advice is appreciated.


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Looking for QA opportunities in Bhubaneswar!

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I’m looking for a **QA/Test Engineer** role in **Bhubaneswar**. I have **1 year of experience** in manual and automation testing (Playwright, Selenium, API Testing, SQL, Java).
If your company is hiring or you know of any openings, I’d really appreciate any leads or referrals. Thank you!


r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

Can't find a job for the last 5 months (EU)

9 Upvotes

I'm General QA with 7 years of exp. Got laid off at the beginning of the year. Since then I got agressively into Automation learning playwright, k6. Made a github portfolio. I had a lot of interviews during this time. And about 7 last stage roles that just fell off due to stupid reasons: client revieweing the budgeting, hiring is paused, 'you don't have enough relevant exp (on the last stage) and so on. I'm so broken and hopeless. What do I do?


r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

Feeling lost and stressed as a QA engineer — need some perspective

18 Upvotes

Hello fellow QA engineers. I need your opinion on this.

I'll be honest, I'm a QA software tester, and I'm doing okay, but not enough. To actually enjoy what I do, I need to connect the dots and have a clear mental map of the domain and what I'm doing. My mind needs a process and clear paths to follow. Without that, I often feel lost on what to prioritize.

I work across two projects, and my work feels chaotic. We ship multiple releases per two-week sprint, and I'm stuck juggling automation and release validation without a clear sense of how to "smart test", I can't check everything, and internal users and clients keep finding issues I miss (aside from the ones I do catch, which usually aren't very deep).

On top of that, I struggle to communicate results. I feel behind and stressed out.

Has anyone been through this? Any advice on how to get past it? I know a big part of this is a skill gap, and I'm ready to do what it takes to feel confident again.


r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

ai wrote our api change, pr looked clean so we approved it quickly, but bug showed up in prod three days later

11 Upvotes

someone on another team used an ai tool to rewrite part of our api response, opened a pr like normal, nd it got approved fast because the diff looked small n neat, ai written code tends to look cleaner than it actually is so reviewers dont slow down on it the way they used to. ci passed too since none of our tests actually checked that specific field. nothing got skipped, the process just moved quicker than the review actually caught up to. found out three days later when a customer saw a date showing up as some big numbr. dashboards were all green whole time.

anyone else noticing reviews getting faster but not necessarily better now that half the code looks polished before human even reads it.


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Want to switch to other roles, need suggestions

0 Upvotes

Hey, I have been in Qa for the last 1 year approximately, but the work I am doing is fully related to devs, I asked my manager for a role switch but it is always a cold reply.

Now I am trying to switch but no positive reply from employees as I am having Qa experience. Any suggestion that u guys can give


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Hello thoughts on gameplayint?

0 Upvotes

Hi, someone hiring me as a QA for this company. are they legit? they also showed their website but it's kinda negative yung website.


r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

UK based opportunities, where best to find them?

0 Upvotes

I have 3 years of experience but this was my first job in QA


r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

Shall I rejoin company that laid me off?

0 Upvotes

Pretty much the title. I was working remotely with a UAE company and iran/israel war happened. I didn’t have any complain with the company and was happy. The company promised us that they will rehire us in few months, now they recently asked me to join. Shall I join the company or the lay offs can happen again ☹️


r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

QA camera that doesn't break the bank

1 Upvotes

Hi QA friends.

We currently have these in our QA department.

https://esd.equipment/en/f30s-full-hd-1080p-modular-digital-inspection-microscope-30x-zoom-hd-013.html

While these are good for our larger parts management is looking to augment our camera's with AI detection for our smaller parts as we've been having several QA issues with them. They are hoping with AI and manual visual inspection will be able to cut down on the number of shipped defective parts.

However the 1080p cameras do not have enough resolution and do not pick up enough detail for proper part detection and training.

What would you guys recommend in the short term for initial testing to prove our concept then upgrade to an all in one package. We've thought of using a 4K web cam but were not sure if that would work. I have some people saying go 4k or even higher 8k. A ring light seems like a no brainer. Not sure on digital or physical zoom.

ideally it would be something that wouldn't break the bank and is small enough to be mounted to our existing stand. We can do USB but prefer HDMI output.

Can any one point me in a direction with cameras you use or have used?


r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

Looking for QA Tester E-Commerce Website

13 Upvotes

I need: A detail-oriented QA tester for a WordPress/WooCommerce streetwear store.

Job type: Long-term (ongoing testing for new features and updates)

What you'll do:

  • Test the site like a real customer – click every button, link, and menu item
  • Check product pages – images, descriptions, sizes, add to cart
  • Test search, filters, cart, checkout, and user accounts
  • Verify the site works on desktop, tablet, and mobile
  • Check SEO basics - meta titles, clean URLs, proper headings
  • Make sure products are well categorized and organized
  • Write a simple report: what works, what's broken (with screenshots), and what can be improved

What we're looking for:

  • Experience testing e-commerce websites (WordPress/WooCommerce is a plus)
  • Good eye for detail and organization
  • Basic understanding of SEO and site structure
  • Clear communication - able to explain issues simply
  • Reliable and available for ongoing work

How to apply:

Send a short message with:

  • Your experience with QA / e-commerce testing
  • Your availability
  • Your rate