Are you here to know who a QA tester is? What are the tasks of a QA engineer, and how do remote quality assurance engineers work? No worries. I will explain quality assurance engineers, remote QA engineer’s jobs, how to become a quality assurance engineer and what are the benefits of being a remote quality assurance engineer, etc., in this quality assurance engineers ultimate guide.

A quality assurance engineer is more than a QA tester. Basically, a QA engineer is the responsible person for not only QA testing but also completing all technical expertise before launching a product such as software, mobile application, eCommerce application or game, etc.

If you want to know more about remote quality assurance engineers, don’t go anywhere. Read my QA engineers ultimate guide and enjoy learning.

What is QA Engineering?

Explaining the Quality Assurance Engineering Article
Figure 01: Quality Assurance Engineering

Quality Assurance engineering is the procedure that runs on a software product, like a mobile application, website, or game, before launching it to the consumers.

QA engineering includes the following tasks that may help you understand it deeply through this QA engineers guide:

  • Checking the requirements
  • Assessing risks
  • Planning ideas to improve
  • Planning tests
  • Analyzing the test results

Who is a QA Engineer?

Quality assurance engineers are the persons who work to ensure the quality of software, game, mobile, e-commerce, and other applications.

QA engineers play a wide range of responsibilities than QA testers. You can say that QA engineer’s role is more than QA testers since they are responsible for the followings:

  • Test specifications
  • Technical design documents
  • Test plans and test cases
  • Plan and coordinate testing activities
  • Design, build and execute test scripts using open-source tools
  • Identify, record, and track bugs

Who is a Graduate QA Engineer?

Explaining a Graduate Quality Assurance Engineer
Figure 02: Graduate QA Engineer

The Graduate Quality Assurance engineer term is very familiar in Quality Assurance Engineering.

Isn’t it interesting?

So, who is this graduate QA engineer?

For which qualities can you call someone a graduate quality assurance engineer?

Okay. Let the QA engineers ultimate guide help you understand.

Graduate QA engineers are the persons who investigate pieces of software and analyze their requirements.

Besides, they ensure the functional and non-functional requirements to meet the goal and run manual and automated tests.

Moreover, they experience a period of training and upskilling to know how to use industry-standard tooling to complete their job to an expert level.

Why Should You Choose QA Engineering as a Career?

If you are confused between choosing or not choosing quality assurance engineering as your career, then this QA engineers ultimate guide is for you. Here I will include the reasons for choosing QA engineering as a profession in my quality assurance engineers ultimate guide.

So, you should choose the QA engineering profession for the following reasons:

  • Get Creative
  • Constant Learning
  • Various Pathways
  • It’s Challenging
  • High Demand

Get Creative

If you think that QA engineering does not require creativity, then you are wrong. Yet you have to be creative and innovative while completing your task as a remote quality assurance engineer. The right quality assurance engineer is always careful about his customers and tries to understand every pain point of them.

Constant Learning

I believe that every profession is a day-to-day learning process. Whatever we are doing, we are learning through it. A quality assurance engineering career is one of the most constant learning procedures. Sometimes you may have to use the latest tech that nobody used before you.

Various Pathways

As mentioned above, a quality assurance engineer is more than a quality assurance tester. Remote quality assurance engineers have to go through a lot of pathways to ensure the quality of a product. Moreover, there are chances to play various roles.

Challenging

QA engineering is a very challenging and complex profession. If anybody is very likely to choose a challenging career, he or she should choose QA engineering as a profession.

High Demand

Keeping pace with the growing technology, the demand for quality assurance engineers is increasing constantly and rapidly. QA engineers are mandatory for a high-quality product.

Advantages of QA Engineers Career

You have already understood the importance and characteristics of a quality assurance engineer’s career through my QA engineers guide. In this stage of my quality assurance engineers ultimate guide, I will let you know the benefits of choosing a QA engineers career.

So, the basic advantages of a QA engineers career are:

  • Competitive Salary
  • Short Training Period
  • Not Overburdening
  • Good Career Opportunities
  • Affordable

Competitive Salary

Quality assurance engineering is a profession with a competitive salary. You can call it a well-paying job too. In the USA, a Junior QA engineer typically earns about $70,000 a year, whereas experienced and senior professionals make up to $100,000 a year.

Short Training Period

As technology is changing rapidly, the importance of QA engineers and their training according to the change are also expanding. But you do not need to be scared. These training periods are not that lengthy. For instance, you can learn Manual QA only in a month.

Not Overburdening

The remote QA engineer’s job is not over-stressful, unlike other jobs. A remote quality assurance engineer is responsible for the following:

  • Verifying product requirements
  • Performing risk assessments
  • Improving the quality of the product
  • Testing
  • Planning
  • Analyzing test results etc.

Besides, QA engineers do not usually perform overtime. That’s why the rate of burnout is also low.

Good Career Opportunities

You can compare the quality assurance profession with a big tree. If you have just entered this profession, you must know that there are a lot of opportunities waiting for you. You can work in various areas within the IT field. 

Affordable

For being a remote quality assurance engineer, you must learn:

  • Test classification
  • Methods
  • Tools
  • Test scripting etc.

Still, there is no university that provides a degree in QA engineering. However, you can learn it professionally through various courses which are not much more expensive.

Types of QA Engineers

There are various kinds of quality assurance engineers, and the basic types are only two. Here I will explain these two types of quality assurance engineers in this QA engineers ultimate guide.

So, the two major kinds of quality assurance engineers are:

  • Manual QA Engineers
  • Automation QA Engineers

Manual QA Engineers

The Manual Quality Assurance Engineer is the person who is responsible for the following:

  • Planning
  • Execution
  • Reporting of test results.

A manual QA engineer is on duty to review all products developed in Product Engineering. Manual QA engineers work and give directions with updates in a timely manner.

Automation QA Engineers

A QA Automation Engineer’s tasks are:

  • Writing scripts
  • Creating automation environments
  • Using different automation tools
  • Designing
  • Testing
  • Deploying effective test automation solutions

Quality assurance automation engineers also design automated tests to validate the functionality of web applications or mobile applications.

What are the Key Responsibilities of a QA Engineer?

Key Responsibilities of a Quality Assurance Engineer
Figure 03: Key Responsibilities of a QA Engineer

So, now you have learned about who is a QA Engineer from this QA engineers guide. But why should you hire Quality Assurance engineers? What are their responsibilities?

Aren’t these questions bugging your head right now?

No worries.

Basically, the basic responsibilities of a QA engineer are to

  • Examine the client’s requirements
  • Test the specifications
  • Create technical design documents
  • Make comprehensive and well-structured test plans and test cases
  • Plan and coordinate testing activities
  • Design, create and implement test scripts using open-source tools
  • Identify, record, and track bugs
  • Perform intensive regression testing when bugs are fixed
  • Develop and utilize testing processes to meet client requirements
  • Identify system requirements
  • Collaboration with internal teams
  • Keep track of the debugging process’s progress
  • Explore the root causes of non-conforming software
  • Teach people how to fix them
  • Keep track of quality assurance metrics
  • Find defect densities and the number of open defects.
  • Keep up with the latest testing tools and strategies.
  • Optimize the process of testing
  • Error lifecycle testing

QA Engineer’s Skills

In this stage of my quality assurance engineers ultimate guide, I intend to provide you with the basic skills of quality assurance engineers.

Basically, a quality assurance engineer should have three skills. These are:

  • Soft Skills
  • Hard Skills

Soft Skills

These are the skills that are not directly connected with the QA engineers’ jobs, but you cannot even think to ignore them. Such skills are:

  • Work ability in an Agile environment
  • Critical thinking
  • Analytical skills
  • Good communication skills etc.

Hard Skills

These skills are directly connected with the profession. That means whenever you are applying for a remote QA engineer’s job, these are the qualifications of that will determine your quality in that job, such as:

  • Deep understanding of software testing
  • Understanding of bug life cycle
  • Programming skills
  • Basic SQL knowledge etc.

QA Engineering Tools

I have already explained the skills of a quality assurance engineer in this quality assurance engineers guide. So, let’s get to know about the tools used by QA engineers.

Since quality assurance engineers work in different desktop and mobile operating systems and browsers, simulators, and emulators and use web proxies for cross-browser testing, they must use many tools.

So, what are these tools?

The basic QA engineering tools are:

  • Quality management tools
  • Defect tracking tools
  • Test management tools
  • Project management software
  • Client-database connection tools
  • API testing tools
  • Code writing tools

How to Become a QA Engineer?

If you want to become a remote quality assurance engineer, go through the following steps. In my QA engineers ultimate guide, I will add some necessary steps for you to become a QA engineer professionally.

These steps are:

  • Step 1 – Choose a programming language
  • Step 2 – Learn coding and software development
  • Step 3 – Apply for internships or contractual positions
  • Step 4 – Develop and refine technical skills
  • Step 5 – Get a professional certification
  • Step 6 – Create your technical resume and portfolio
  • Step 7 – Start your job search and prepare for a technical interview

Differences Between a Software QA Engineer, a Software QA Tester, and a QA Analyst

If you have developed software and now want to ensure its quality, whether it can reach your business goal and claim customer satisfaction.

In that case which one should you hire?

Hire Quality Assurance engineers or hire Quality Assurance testers or hire QA Analyst?

You might have heard these three terms. But do you know the differences between these three?

If the answer is no, the hire QA engineers guide will provide the solution.

QA Testers

Ensuring the quality of your developed software or web product is the main responsibility of a Quality Assurance tester. QA testers will be assigned to the work after the development of the product. But they will find the potential bugs and run tests only for those you assign.

Sometimes, a supervisor or analyst gives them a list of test cases to perform and record the results.

QA Analyst

Second, QA analysts are the secondary level of QA engineering, whereas many think of Quality Assurance Analysts as entry-level for most non-gaming QA.

Hence, a QA Analyst is required to design test cases and test plans. They must also comprehend how to plan tests, not just execute them.

Sometimes, in firms that don’t have automation, QA Analysts are used interchangeably with QA Engineers.

Quality Assurance Engineers

On the other hand, the role of QA engineers is more than that. A QA Engineer has all of the responsibilities and skills of an analyst and knows to code and develop automation by contributing to a framework or creating one.

Manual testing is another task for Quality Assurance Engineers. They must work on the whole product, not only the selected testing, as QA testers.

In addition, they perform both the QA automation test engineer and QA engineer manual roles.

Conclusion

In conclusion of this quality assurance engineers ultimate guide, I want to say that QA engineers are in high demand nowadays. If you are thinking about the profession, do not get confused. Just be passionate, build yourself, and build your career. If you are here to hire a quality assurance engineer or a QA engineers team, read my QA engineers hiring guide and find your most required one.

QA Engineers FAQs

There are some questions that people with interest in QA engineers frequently ask. See below for these questions with expert answers:

What are the Tasks of a QA Engineer?

The basic tasks of a QA engineer are:
1. Examining client’s requirements
2. Testing the specifications
3. Creating technical design documents
4. Identifying system requirements
5. Collaborating with internal teams
6. Error-free lifecycle testing

What Should I Do to Hire QA Engineers?

For selecting the right Quality Assurance engineers, follow these steps:
1. Use the cost-per-hire metric
2. Make an outreach strategy
3. Interview like a tester
4. Make the candidate work with the team
5. Check skills

Is QA Engineering a Good Career?

Yes, it is. Quality assurance engineering is a quality job with a standard pay range. For example, a newcomer QA engineer’s salary starts from $70,000 per year, whereas the experts earn up to $100,000 a year in the USA.

Is a QA Engineer a Tester?

Of course, a QA engineer is a tester. To be very specific, a quality assurance engineer is much more than a tester. He is responsible for finding bugs, test execution, writing test results, etc.

Is QA Engineering Hard?

Quality assurance engineering is not directly connected with the coding system. But you have to learn some basic coding, not as much as a web developer or a software developer.

How do I Become a QA with No Experience?

Without any experience, you can start your career with QA engineering by attending some computer-related degree. You should focus on both hard and soft skills.

This page was last edited on 31 January 2023, at 2:38 pm