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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for IT Tester

💰 $50,000 - $95,000

Quality AssuranceInformation TechnologySoftware TestingEngineering

🎯 Role Definition

The IT Tester is responsible for designing, executing, and maintaining comprehensive test strategies and test cases to ensure software quality across web, mobile and backend systems. This role requires a mix of manual testing discipline and automation competency—creating reproducible test suites, validating functional and non-functional requirements, reporting and tracking defects, and collaborating closely with developers, product owners and DevOps to drive continuous improvement in product quality. The ideal candidate brings strong analytical skills, domain curiosity, and practical hands-on experience with automation frameworks, API testing tools, defect management systems, and Agile delivery processes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • QA Analyst / Junior QA Engineer with 0–2 years testing experience.
  • Software Developer in Test (SDET) transitioning from development or scripting roles.
  • Systems Analyst / Support Engineer moving into structured QA/testing responsibilities.

Advancement To:

  • Senior QA Engineer / Lead Tester responsible for test strategy and mentoring.
  • Automation Architect or SDET Lead designing automation frameworks and CI/CD integration.
  • QA Manager / Test Manager overseeing test teams and cross-project QA governance.

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps Engineer focusing on CI/CD pipelines and quality gates.
  • Product Analyst or Business Analyst focusing on requirements and acceptance criteria.
  • Security Tester or Performance Engineer specializing in non-functional testing.

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, develop and maintain detailed, reusable test plans, test cases, and test scripts (manual and automated) that map to functional and non-functional requirements, acceptance criteria and user stories across web, mobile and API layers.
  • Execute functional, regression, integration, system and acceptance testing activities to validate new features and bug fixes, ensuring traceability from requirements to test results and providing clear pass/fail documentation.
  • Create, maintain and run automated test suites using tools such as Selenium WebDriver, Cypress, Playwright, or equivalent frameworks, and integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps).
  • Perform API testing with Postman, SoapUI, RestAssured or similar tools—designing test collections, validating JSON/XML payloads, authentication flows, error handling and response timing as part of contract and integration testing.
  • Identify, log and manage defects using defect tracking tools such as JIRA, Bugzilla, or Azure Boards; provide clear reproduction steps, logs and screenshots, and work with developers to prioritize fixes and verify remediation.
  • Drive exploratory and scenario-based testing to discover edge cases and intermittent issues not captured by formal test cases; document findings and recommend product improvements.
  • Collaborate with product owners, business analysts and developers to review requirements, acceptance criteria and user stories; clarify ambiguous requirements and define testable outcomes early in the sprint lifecycle.
  • Develop and maintain test data sets, mocking/stubbing strategies and test environments; coordinate with environment and release teams to ensure reliable, reproducible test runs.
  • Execute performance, load and stress tests in partnership with performance engineering teams or using tools like JMeter, Gatling, k6; analyze results and report bottlenecks and capacity constraints.
  • Conduct security and vulnerability validation checks as part of QA sign-off, including authentication/authorization scenarios and basic OWASP Top 10 verifications in coordination with security teams.
  • Participate in sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily stand-ups and retrospectives; provide testing estimates, risk assessments and quality metrics to support Agile delivery.
  • Coach and mentor junior testers on best practices for test case design, test automation, defect reporting and test environment setup; review peer test artifacts to ensure quality and consistency.
  • Maintain and improve test automation frameworks and test harnesses—refactor scripts for reliability, reduce flakiness and add abstractions to lower maintenance overhead.
  • Analyze test results and metrics (test coverage, pass/fail rates, defect density, escape rates) to produce actionable quality reports and present quality dashboards to stakeholders.
  • Support release and deployment validation activities including pre-release smoke checks, post-deployment sanity tests and rollback verification procedures.
  • Work with CI/CD and DevOps teams to implement quality gates, automate regression runs on build pipelines and enable fast feedback loops for developers.
  • Validate cross-browser and cross-device compatibility for web and mobile applications, using device farms, browser stacks or physical devices where required.
  • Automate UI and end-to-end business flows where feasible while maintaining a pragmatic balance between automation and manual exploratory testing.
  • Assist in compliance, regulatory and audit testing by documenting testing artifacts, traceability matrices and evidence required for certification and governance.
  • Create and maintain test automation documentation, coding standards and guidelines to ensure consistent practices and ease of onboarding new team members.
  • Troubleshoot, debug and isolate complex issues by analyzing logs, stack traces, database queries and server responses—working with backend and infrastructure teams to identify root causes.
  • Evaluate and recommend testing tools, techniques and process improvements to increase test efficiency, reduce cycle times and improve overall product quality.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis to validate data integrity and business rules.
  • Contribute to the organization's testing strategy, quality roadmap and automation backlog prioritization.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate acceptance criteria and business rules into testable scenarios and automation priorities.
  • Participate in sprint planning and Agile ceremonies within the cross-functional team and provide timely testing estimates and dependency identification.
  • Assist with onboarding and documentation for new releases, including release notes verification and QA sign-off checklists.
  • Support user acceptance testing (UAT) activities, coordinate with stakeholders and incorporate UAT feedback into the defect lifecycle.
  • Maintain relationships with third-party vendors for integration testing and validation of external interfaces.
  • Help define service level objectives (SLOs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) that relate to quality and reliability for product features.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Strong experience designing, writing, and executing test cases across functional, regression, integration and acceptance testing.
  • Hands-on experience with web UI automation frameworks such as Selenium WebDriver, Cypress, Playwright, or equivalent.
  • API testing and validation experience using Postman, RestAssured, SoapUI, or similar tools; ability to create automated API tests and validate contract/integration flows.
  • Familiarity with test automation languages and scripting such as Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, or C# for building and maintaining automation suites.
  • Practical knowledge of CI/CD integration for tests using Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or similar continuous integration platforms.
  • Proficiency with defect tracking and agile project management tools such as JIRA, Azure Boards, or Rally; strong defect lifecycle management skills.
  • Ability to write SQL queries and validate data in relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server) to verify backend results.
  • Experience with test data management, environment configuration, mocking/stubbing approaches and virtualization tools.
  • Familiarity with performance/load testing tools like JMeter, Gatling or k6 and understanding of basic performance tuning concepts.
  • Knowledge of version control systems (Git) and collaborative development workflows (branching, pull requests, code reviews).
  • Understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC) models, Agile methodologies (Scrum/Kanban) and test-driven or behavior-driven development (TDD/BDD) practices.
  • Exposure to mobile testing tools and strategies (Appium, device farms, emulators) for Android/iOS application validation.
  • Basic familiarity with security testing concepts and OWASP Top 10 to support secure application verification.
  • Experience building or contributing to automation frameworks and maintaining test artifact repositories.

Soft Skills

  • Strong analytical thinking and attention to detail with an ability to translate ambiguous requirements into clear, testable scenarios.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication—capable of writing clear defect reports and collaborating across engineering, product and operations teams.
  • Problem-solving mindset with persistence to replicate, isolate and drive resolution of complex intermittent issues.
  • Time management and prioritization skills to balance multiple testing streams and meet sprint/release deadlines.
  • Team-oriented and collaborative: comfortable working in cross-functional teams and acting as a quality advocate.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning attitude to evaluate new testing tools, frameworks and best practices.
  • Customer-focused with a practical understanding of business impact and risk-based testing decisions.
  • Mentoring and coaching aptitude to help uplift junior QA members and share testing craftsmanship.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering or a related technical discipline; or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related fields.
  • Professional certification such as ISTQB Foundation/Advanced, Certified Agile Tester, or equivalent.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Information Technology
  • Applied Mathematics or related STEM disciplines (advantageous for automation/test engineering roles)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 2–5 years of hands-on software testing experience for mid-level IT Tester roles; 0–2 years for junior positions; 5+ years for senior roles.

Preferred:

  • 3–5+ years of combined manual and automation testing across web, mobile and API layers.
  • Proven track record of building or maintaining automation suites, integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines and working in Agile environments.
  • Prior experience using modern test tooling (Selenium, Cypress, Postman, JMeter), defect trackers (JIRA) and version control (Git).
  • ISTQB or equivalent QA certification and experience with performance or security testing is a strong plus.
  • Domain experience (finance, healthcare, e-commerce, telecom) is advantageous when testing regulated or mission-critical systems.
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