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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for QA Tester

💰 $50,000 - $95,000

Quality AssuranceSoftware TestingQA Tester

🎯 Role Definition

The QA Tester is responsible for designing, executing, and maintaining test cases and test automation to ensure the quality, reliability, and performance of web, mobile, and API products. This role partners with product managers, developers, and DevOps to prevent defects, validate features against acceptance criteria, and deliver flawless releases through automated and manual testing strategies.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • QA Intern or QA Trainee with foundational manual testing experience.
  • Junior QA Analyst with basic test case execution and defect reporting skills.
  • Software Developer in Test (SDET) bootcamp graduates transitioning into testing.
  • Customer Support or Technical Support roles moving into product-quality responsibilities.

Advancement To:

  • Senior QA Engineer / Lead QA Tester responsible for test strategy and mentoring.
  • Automation Engineer or SDET focused on building scalable test frameworks.
  • Test Architect designing end-to-end test infrastructure and pipelines.
  • QA Manager or Head of Quality overseeing QA teams and quality processes.

Lateral Moves:

  • Product Analyst or Business Analyst working closely with QA on acceptance criteria.
  • Release Manager coordinating deployments and quality gates.
  • DevOps or CI/CD Engineer focusing on pipeline-driven quality assurance.

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Develop, document, and maintain detailed test plans, test cases, and test scripts based on functional and technical requirements to ensure full coverage for web, mobile, API, and backend services.
  • Design and implement automated test suites using industry-standard frameworks (for example Selenium WebDriver, Cypress, Playwright) to accelerate regression testing and reduce manual effort.
  • Execute comprehensive manual testing for new features, edge cases, and exploratory testing when automation is not viable, ensuring adherence to acceptance criteria defined by product owners.
  • Create and run API tests using tools and libraries such as Postman, REST Assured, or HTTP client libraries to validate endpoint behavior, error handling, and data integrity.
  • Triage, report, and track defects in issue tracking systems (such as JIRA), including providing clear reproduction steps, logs, screenshots, and suggested severity/priority for efficient developer resolution.
  • Collaborate closely with product managers, UX designers, and developers in early-stage requirement reviews to identify testable requirements and prevent defects before they are coded.
  • Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI) to provide fast feedback and enforce quality gates for pull requests and production releases.
  • Maintain and evolve a modular, reusable automation framework, emphasizing maintainability, reliability, and fast execution times across environments and browsers.
  • Perform cross-browser and cross-device testing to ensure consistent functionality and UI rendering across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and major mobile devices or emulators.
  • Validate database interactions and backend systems using SQL queries and data validation techniques to ensure data consistency, migrations, and transactional integrity.
  • Execute performance and load testing with tools like JMeter, Gatling, or k6 to identify bottlenecks and provide actionable recommendations for scaling and responsiveness improvements.
  • Participate in sprint planning, grooming, and daily stand-ups to align testing priorities, identify dependencies, and ensure quality considerations are baked into delivery timelines.
  • Develop and maintain test data provisioning strategies (factories, synthetic datasets, anonymized production snapshots) to enable reliable, repeatable test runs across environments.
  • Automate smoke and sanity checks to validate deploy readiness and reduce the time required for release validation manual steps.
  • Conduct security and vulnerability checks aligned with OWASP principles, validating authentication/authorization flows, input validation, and common web vulnerabilities.
  • Mentor junior QA engineers, share best practices for test design and automation, and conduct code reviews for test scripts to raise team quality standards.
  • Facilitate regression test cycles and coordinate release verification testing, including defining exit criteria and sign-off for production deployments.
  • Monitor test coverage metrics, flaky test rates, and CI pipeline health; propose and implement improvements to improve reliability and reduce false positives/negatives.
  • Collaborate with DevOps to provision and maintain test environments, containers, and infrastructure-as-code resources to mirror production conditions for more accurate testing.
  • Create clear, actionable testing documentation, runbooks, and onboarding materials so new team members can reproduce tests and understand test strategy quickly.
  • Drive continuous improvement of QA processes by collecting feedback from retrospectives, establishing KPIs (defect density, mean time to detect), and evolving test strategy to meet business needs.
  • Participate in customer-reported issue investigations, perform root cause analysis, and validate fixes to improve customer satisfaction and reduce recurrence.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc testing requests, bug investigations, and production hotfix verification with quick triage and replication steps.
  • Contribute to the QA roadmap and test automation backlog, prioritizing high-value test scenarios and reducing manual testing overhead.
  • Assist with accessibility testing (WCAG compliance) and provide remediation guidance for UI and content accessibility issues.
  • Collaborate with data and analytics teams to validate tracking events, telemetry, and metrics used for product decisions.
  • Help maintain test environments, coordinate data refreshes, and script environment setup to ensure consistent outcomes for automated tests.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Manual testing: test case design, exploratory testing, regression test planning, and defect lifecycle management (JIRA, Azure DevOps).
  • Test automation: hands-on experience building and maintaining automated suites using Selenium WebDriver, Cypress, Playwright, or similar frameworks.
  • API testing: experience with Postman, REST Assured, SoapUI, or equivalent tools and writing assertions for JSON/XML payloads.
  • Programming & scripting: proficiency in one or more languages used for automation (Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Ruby).
  • CI/CD integration: experience integrating automated tests into Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI, or similar pipelines for pre-merge and nightly runs.
  • Performance testing: knowledge of JMeter, Gatling, k6, or similar for load, stress and endurance testing, and interpreting results.
  • Test design methodologies: understanding of boundary value analysis, equivalence partitioning, decision tables, and risk-based testing.
  • Database & SQL: ability to write queries for data validation, test data setup, and backend verification across relational databases.
  • Version control: experience working with Git, branching strategies, and pull request processes in collaborative environments.
  • Mobile testing: experience with Appium, device farms (BrowserStack, Sauce Labs), or native mobile testing approaches.
  • BDD/TDD: familiarity with Cucumber, Gherkin, or TDD practices to align tests with behavior-driven requirements.
  • Test management tools: experience with TestRail, Zephyr, or similar tools for organizing test cases and test runs.
  • Security & accessibility basics: understanding of OWASP Top 10, threat modeling basics, and WCAG accessibility checks.
  • Cloud & containers: familiarity with AWS/Azure/GCP services and containerization (Docker) for reproducible test environments.

Soft Skills

  • Strong verbal and written communication skills to clearly document defects, testing scope, and release risk to non-technical stakeholders.
  • High attention to detail and a methodical mindset to discover edge cases and intermittent issues.
  • Analytical problem solver who performs root cause analysis and proposes workable remediation paths.
  • Collaborative team player who partners across product, engineering, and operations to deliver high-quality software.
  • Time management and prioritization skills to balance exploratory testing, automation, and release deadlines.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning mindset to adopt new tools, frameworks, and testing approaches quickly.
  • Customer-focused attitude that prioritizes real-world user scenarios and product reliability.
  • Coaching and mentoring ability to grow junior testers and share best practices across the team.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related technical field; or equivalent practical experience and certifications.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree plus QA/test automation certifications (ISTQB, Certified Selenium Tester) or advanced degree (MS) in a relevant discipline.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Technology
  • Data Science (for analytics-driven testing roles)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 1–5 years of hands-on QA experience (manual and automation) in software, mobile, or web products.

Preferred: 3+ years with demonstrable automation framework ownership, CI/CD integration, API and performance testing experience, and a track record of delivering reliable releases in Agile environments.

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