Test automation and QA career guide: Top roles and skills

The test automation and QA industry is going through a lot of changes, and new technologies and standards emerge frequently. To maintain a stable career path, QA professionals must constantly be attentive to these changes. You can take a QA test course, learn new automation tools, and just constantly learn new parts of the methodology ‒ this will ensure your career in QA goes up.

Best QA job positions

So, what are the most desired and promising jobs in the quality assurance field?

Quality Engineer

The transformation of quality assurance teams into quality engineering enterprises is one of the soundest trends in the field of software quality.

Companies have had to create testing tools and processes that incorporate ongoing quality checks into the development cycle in order to provide continuous software delivery. That indicates that competent experts are developing the tests instead of conducting them. And for that, an engineering mentality is one of the most prioritized features in every candidate.

Test automation is getting more intricate and thorough to be integrated into development architecture, making quality engineers highly demanded.

Test automation engineer

This term is sometimes used synonymously with quality engineer positions, but, in fact, it’s different since it calls for extra development abilities specific to test automation.

Engineers specializing in test automation have a testing mentality and very advanced coding skills. These professionals can plan and create automated tests, then build and deploy these solutions.

Test automation engineers must have good organizational capabilities and the ability to communicate with QA leaders, other engineers, and the project’s developers. They must also be prepared to communicate closely with developers in order to comprehend the software’s leading features. 

SDET

Another term occasionally confused with the jobs of quality engineer and test automation engineer is the software developer engineering in test.

SDETs are the avant-garde of the quality assurance world. They are professionals who work as software engineers and are well-versed in test theory and implementation. These are must-haves for the perfect continuous implementation and delivery cycle.

Testing marshal

Numerous IT companies are employing professionals for the position of arbiters of responsibility for automated test coverage. These professionals usually go by a quality engineer, quality manager, or QA lead titles.

These specialists take on the duties of the test marshal. A testing marshal looks for complacency in testing and detects quality checks that have been done in a lazy manner. Additionally, they offer accountability frameworks to make sure testers do comprehensive testing.

Performance test engineer

The importance of performance management as a subject of software quality is rising. The majority of businesses understand that bad software performance results in low conversion rates, lost transactions, and a bad user experience overall.

The most demanded skills

Working in QA and, more specifically, automation testing, requires a specialist to possess a few critical skills. Here are some facts on technical and soft skills IT companies are looking for in candidates for QA job positions:

  1. All of the critical QA positions listed by recruiters and HRs are becoming more and more dependent on test automation development skills. The need for workers with experience in scripting and automated testing is already strong, and it will surely increase in the future.
  2. Manual testing expertise and knowledge are still relevant today, though. Organizations will always require someone with strong both manual and automated testing knowledge, especially in QA lead positions. In the end, even when the development team entirely controls final testing, a business will want quality specialists who are familiar with the foundations of test theory and practice.
  3. In a fully connected DevOps environment, collaboration is essential for specialists in quality assurance and test automation. Effective quality and test automation professionals seek to understand how their area of expertise fits into the larger picture and regard product managers, developers, operational employees, and executives as colleagues.

Diversity is the ultimate objective for both the excellent employee and the company. As businesses expect additional soft skills and coding expertise to supplement current talents in quality basics, QA and test employees must widen their skill sets all the time.