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

737 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 4h ago

Screenshot regression gets noisy at exactly the wrong time

0 Upvotes

Release week is when a screenshot queue starts collecting everything at once: a real layout shift, a clipped label, and the usual font rendering noise. The diff job catches all of it, then a reviewer opens a stack of nearly identical images to decide what can actually block the release.

One idea is to send only those noisy regions to SAM 2 and use LingBot-Vision for the boundary features. It would still need a small classifier trained on the team's own screenshots, with the original image next to every result. Sorting obvious rendering noise away from likely layout bugs is enough; the release decision can stay with the reviewer.


r/QualityAssurance 8h ago

QAs using Claude Code or Codex: which one do you prefer?

2 Upvotes

For those using AI coding agents for web test automation, which one are you currently preferring: Claude Code or Codex?

I mainly work with Playwright/Cypress and would like to hear from people who have actually used both.

What made you choose one over the other?


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

AI testing software for scalable automated model validation

2 Upvotes

We've started shipping a couple of llm-backed features and I'm realising our existing regression suite doesn't really give us much confidence once the model behaviour starts changing....

Automated regression seems to work well for our regular application. But with LLMs, even a small prompt tweak or model update can change responses even when all tests are still passing. I'm not sure how to validate it properly.

I've been spending some time looking at some tools. Promptfoo, langsmith, deepeval, testsigma etc. but the more I read it feels like each one handles a different part of the problem. I'm trying figure out what we actually use in production.

Anything working well for your team? One platform or are you guys combining different tools?

Also, what does your validation workflow look like from building evaluation datasets and integrating checks into CI/CD to deciding whether a model change is actually safe enough to ship.

Just want to avoid spending weeks building something that we'll end up replacing a few months later .


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

Free tool for blockchain testers

3 Upvotes

I do blockchain QA, and finding a working testnet faucet was a waste of time.

I kept a written document but it kept getting outdated and I never knew the actual status of the faucet.

I built a small tool to help myself:

https://testnetfaucets.dev

It covers 36 faucets across 30+ networks (Sepolia, Solana, BTC, Polygon Amoy, Fuji, Sui, Aptos, Sei…). It does a simple faily HTTP check and reports back.

It's open source, so if you spot one wrongly marked down (or know a faucet I'm missing), corrections are welcome.

Not selling anything — it's free and there's no login. Just hoping it saves someone else the 20-minute faucet hunt.


r/QualityAssurance 19h ago

Manual Software QA or Automation?

0 Upvotes

I am planning to change career and shift to QA.


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

QA Engineer looking for remote side income – Need advice on platforms & moonlighting

11 Upvotes

Hi everyone,
I’m currently working full-time as a QA Engineer and, due to some financial commitments, I’m looking for a part-time remote job or freelance QA/testing work to earn some additional income.

I have a few questions:
Which platforms are genuinely good for finding remote QA/freelance testing work (Upwork, Toptal, Test IO, uTest, etc.)?

If I’m already employed full-time, would taking freelance work be considered moonlighting?
Do these platforms or clients usually ask for PAN, Aadhaar, or other tax details?

Has anyone here managed freelance QA work alongside a full-time job? Any tips or things to watch out for?

Looking for advice from people with real experience. Thanks!


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

Part-time QA role, $25/hr, in-person only, 90 min round trip commute, sole QA person at early stage startup in LA, worth it?

0 Upvotes

I have 5 year QA experience. Manual and automation. I’ve gotten let go 2.5 months ago. Started applying a month ago.

Seeing this part-time job in Los Angeles for an ai platform, they want me on-site 3 days. 90 min round trip commute, sole QA person at early stage startup, I’m gonna have to come in and build QA processes from scratch basically. Will make almost same as EDD is paying.

Only pro is on my resume it’ll say I’m currently employed instead of a gap.

I can get paid more with non-QA part time.

Would it be worth it? Should I take it?


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

Hi All, I developed a doc control app, that can scan documents, add tags, OCR, add folders, revise documents. I am looking for testers. please help.

3 Upvotes

Hi All,

I am QE by profession. made a doc control app for myself.

I made this android app for myself. As my file explorer gets dumped with everything and anything. I wanted to have folders, revise docs(Taxes, insurances, license, etc). with OCR you can search for a word and every document with that word would pop up. you can set expiration date to docs.
please dm and drop a comment if you would like to test my app. you will get lifetime free without ads for this.

thank you.


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

How can I stand out as an entry-level QA Automation Engineer?

1 Upvotes

I have an ISTQB Foundation Level certificate and have built several Java-based projects using Selenium, TestNG, Rest Assured, Postman, Jenkins, and GitHub Actions.

GitHub: https://github.com/alkanf

I don’t have professional QA experience yet. What should I focus on next ?


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

Hi, I'm researching how construction companies manage supplier certificates and expired documents. I'm not selling anything. Could I ask you 10-15 minutes about your current process? I'm trying to understand where the biggest pain points are.

0 Upvotes

r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

How do you self motivate when the project is clearly going to fail?

14 Upvotes

I'm currently working for a medium company who are making a new piece of software. It's absolute dog shit and there are many other tools out there that do the same behaviour in a much cleaner, user friendly way.

We recently sent it out for feedback and got a ton of scathing comments. Waiting to see if leadership action them or just ignore it. But personally, it makes my ability to care about doing a good job very low and affects my motivation as I have to work to deadlines and stressful situations for something I feel will never get released.

I am trying to keep my head down, soldier on and get paid, but it's so awful just knowing it's all for nothing. My efforts feel wasted.


r/QualityAssurance 1d ago

Part-time QA role, $25/hr, 3 days in-person only, worth it or not?

0 Upvotes

I have 5 year QA experience. Manual and automation. I’ve gotten let go 2.5 months ago. Started applying a month ago.

Seeing this part-time job in Los Angeles for an ai platform, they want me on-site 3 days. 90 min round trip commute, sole QA person at early stage startup, I’m gonna have to come in and build QA processes from scratch basically. Will make almost same as EDD is paying. Only pro is on my resume it’ll say I’m currently employed in a QA role instead of a gap. At my last job I used to make $48/hr.

I have other non-qa part time lined up that’s higher.

Would it be worth it? Should I take it?


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Which career should i stick to?

0 Upvotes

So I am a marine engineering graduate in 2022, but couldnt go to sail for some personal reasons. Joined a software company (service based) as a Software QA engineer (manual testing + API testing) but 2 years in, i had to upgrade myself with automation and that required heavy coding which i was lazy enough to not learn and it felt a bit difficult too. Since I was in e-commerce domain, i was offered a Ecommerce listing and sales role at a health and wellness product company (Bootstrapped startup) which i joined. 1 year in this company, it was very toxic environment and long hours so i left and joined a SaaS company as Business development Manager, here am feeling so pressured with sales targets and cold calling makes me feel like worthless. I left this job 2 months ago (working only 9 months in that company) Now i feel that software was better atleast there was decency and job stability and not constant pressure for sales and targets etc etc Im even ready to learn some automation concepts as QA engineer like Java, Selenium but most people say its dead now and software QA is not like it was before because of AI etc and the job market is honestly shit right now. I dont wanna go to a sales role where i do cold calling and emailing with sales targets and i dont have it in me to learn the heavy coding to go back to Software Engineering roles. (also please dont suggest Going back to marine engineering stuff i have forgotten everything about it and cannot go there)

In short-
Software QA career - 2years (manual + API),
Ecommerce Catalogue manager - 1 year (Health and wellness products),
Business development and sales - 8 months, (Saas company)
Jobless, need a stable career long term

(Problem - cant stick to one career, my stupidity and ego that i can do it)

what to do now? If i decide to come back to software QA again what should I learn so theres atleast a bit of stability and not always upskilling tension?


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Playwright or Cypress

6 Upvotes

Hi ! I’m a senior Qa engineer that is mostly manual with a little experience in automation but mostly using non coding software like cypress . I’m looking to learn about coding for automation QA and I was wondering about what class I should take . Is playwright more widely used than cypress ? The classes I found were from Bondar Academy which uses Ai for coding and setting up framework . I just need a little guidance . Please don’t come down on me , I’m not good with coding and I’ve taken JavaScript courses in the past , just didn’t pick it up easily .


r/QualityAssurance 2d ago

Job switch suggestion (Automation tester)

0 Upvotes

r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

How to get a genuine remote job as a quality analyst

4 Upvotes

r/QualityAssurance 4d ago

Do you have best course for devops ?

8 Upvotes

Devops course?


r/QualityAssurance 4d ago

A visual representation of QA in the AI-SDLC

16 Upvotes

I’ve been in QA almost 20 years and have run a quality assurance agency for the past 10.

I’m working on a thesis that QA has always been obviously, but now it’s dead.

I don’t mean that in the Twitter bro sense. I mean that as quality assurance professionals I think we’re finally getting the firepower to move quality from the end “, to the front. (Small rant: I’d rather eat a hammer than use the terms “shift left” and “human in the loop”)

The difference between developer velocity and your quality output is your quality debt. As more and more teams grow their AI-SDLC, the more this debt compounds. Pre-AI this was managed with hiring more qa or automation. That really doesn’t work anymore and is what I wanted to represent in this gif.

I’m working on some visuals to easily represent this concept and made this one (in Claude).

Any thoughts on this visual or on the concept of quality debt itself? Would love to hear from this community of my peers specifically. Thank you!

https://jdaqa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/8CDE8519-A890-4C51-9495-5A29355767BF.gif


r/QualityAssurance 3d ago

Quality Assurance engineer (10+ yrs) offering free manual product audits to startups for feedback

0 Upvotes

Hello,

I'm a QA (and DevOps) engineer with over 10 years of experience working with startups and enterprises. I'm exploring a service to help smaller teams improve their quality and release processes.

Right now, I'm doing this manually and offering a free comprehensive audit to a few startups or small teams. This includes a detailed manual review of functionality, critical user flows, api, basic security, accessibility, SEO.

I'll deliver a clear report highlighting issues and priorities, and test collections if applicable.

In return, I’m looking for honest feedback and answer to couple of questions (not more than 5 multiple choice).

This is purely human work by me, no AI for the analysis or reports.

The goal is practical confidence in releases, not just running tests.

If you're interested, send me a DM with a link to your app (staging would be prefered so I dont break your stats), current challenges, and what do you think is the core of your product. This can be lightweight, but usually more info makes QA life easier.

I'll take on a small number depending on my availability.

Thanks for reading. Any thoughts on QA challenges for small teams are also welcome here.

Cheers


r/QualityAssurance 4d ago

Added a wrong point in the resume. Can i defend it anyhow?

0 Upvotes

I have an inteview for QA. I added mainframe system testing in my resume but I haven't even worked on it and now im looking for ways to cover it in the interview or should i say it was poor wording of mine and move on?


r/QualityAssurance 4d ago

Hello, i build a tool for manual mocking API calls to test frontend apps with no backend change needed

0 Upvotes

This tool was started by me this year, but was finished with the help of AI (the CSS mostly). This is an Express server with a UI and a Chrome extension system.

Are there any better options out there? i don t know, i searched a little and all i could find was complicated setups with manual redirect rules

It is self-hosted by me. It started as a frustration over long test times for specific scenarios that needed backend support to trigger, so I removed the backend from the equation. It sure has some bugs, but it does the job for me, and I got more users from work on it also. I'm posting here because one of my colleagues mentioned that this might help others too. It's free, and I never plan any subscriptions or shady stuff with it. If I ever take it down, I'll post the repo so anyone can self-host it themselves.

How it works after the setup:

  1. User needs a mock on a specific endpoint, let's say https://demoapi/api/login, with a specific body response and HTTP code.
  2. User completes that mock in the UI with all the needed data and presses "add mock".
  3. Assuming all is correct and the extension is enabled, the next time the front end calls that API, the extension will reroute it to the Express server, which feeds the mocked response on the fly. No clunky UIs to create rules!

I also created a small demo of it, you can see it here: https://youtu.be/WkbDXys0FHk(bear with me, I never did something like this before xD)

The usage is invitation-based, you can request a code at sign up: https://mock-tool.com/

Note: Since this is self-hosted and I don't plan to ask for money for it, the data of the served mocks is stored on my server and is not encrypted in any way. Hope it helps other testers! If you find it useful, you can buy me a coffee to support the server uptime or you can not, its never going to pester you or limit the usage.


r/QualityAssurance 5d ago

Single QA in Agile Team.

22 Upvotes

Hi!

It's my first time being in agile team, and I'll be the only qa (automation and manual) in the team of (few developer and po, and scrum, a typical scrum team)

They never had a QA for a long time, and they are expecting a major release in 2 weeks.

So what should I do to make everything in compliance and I dont take a hit for missing any important work items.

Any process or any kind of guidance would be appreciable!

Thanks


r/QualityAssurance 5d ago

How can I transition FROM QA to AI field

0 Upvotes

Hello. I have 12 years of IT experience - all of it into QA. Mostly, I have Manual testing experience along with some JMeter experience. I have learnt Selenium, RestAssured but have got no experience in them.

I wanted to know from people here who may have done career transitions about how can I transition my career from QA field to AI field. I am confused about what should I study and practice to get myself the necessary skills.

I did some research through AI and got some pathways that I should try learning Playwright with Python. It suggested me to learn pyTest framework. It suggested to learn about DeepEvals, promptfoo, LangChain etc. But I want to know from real engineers. Please suggest and guide me.