QA Engineering Roles: Skills, Responsibilities, and Job Description

The legend of bug-free coding is merely a legend. In reality, the software is often far from flawless, mostly due to mistakes made during the development process. However, these issues can be eliminated at the stage of testing, which is commonly known as Quality Assurance (QA).

How to test software properly? That's when QA engineers come under the spotlight. In this article, we'll review the role of QA, focusing on such aspects as:

QA skills
QA responsibilities
How to write a job description for a QA engineer

What is a QA engineer?

A Quality Assurance engineer is a specialist who focuses on ensuring the quality of software. Their primary objective is to prevent defects and identify errors in the functionality of the product. A QA testing engineer is typically a part of the software development team working at companies across multiple business verticals, from manufacturing and automotive to healthcare and fintech.

There are 4 main roles of QA:

Test Analyst. This role of a QA entails testing requirements and ensuring their completeness, accuracy, and clarity.

Test Designer. This QA role is about designing a slew of tests and planning the necessary setup for testing.

Test Executor. This QA role means performing pre-prepared tests and documenting identified errors.

Test Manager. This is a leading QA role, which means a QA engineer plans, schedules, and controls the Quality Assurance process.

In addition to these roles, there are other common roles of QA:

Manual QA Engineer. In this role, a QA tester interacts with the software as an ordinary user to identify any malfunctioning or incorrectly functioning software elements or functions.

QA engineer automation. The QA tester or engineer tests the software using special programs. In many cases, an automated QA engineer writes these programs to fit the needs of specific software. The goal of this QA role is to ensure the quality, integrity, and endurance of the software infrastructure.

What are QA engineer skills?

To excel in the QA role, someone should be well-versed in Computer Science as well as have a basic understanding of software engineering. Other essential QA skills are effective communication skills, problem-solving, critical thinking, and practical skills, including documentation and project management. Here are some common skills for a QA engineer:

At least a Bachelor's degree in one of the STEM fields
Proficiency in software quality assurance methodologies, tools, and processes
Required skills in databases like SQL and scripting
Familiarity with one or more software testing tools

Working as a part of the software development team, a QA test engineer should also absorb the knowledge of other areas. For example:

Familiarity with the tech specifics of software functionality (Software development)
Understanding the market and target audience needs (Business analysis)
Understanding of a project as a whole and its parts (Project management)
Having business acumen and keeping up with the latest software development trends (Product owner)

QA engineer test: Technical expertise

To give you an idea of the skills of a QA engineer, let's review their tech competencies in more detail. Generally speaking, someone in a QA role should have a firm grasp of the technologies related to software development. Some of the top skills required for this role are:

Proficiency in automated testing tools, such as ACCELQ, Avo Assure, Microsoft Coded UI, Test Rigor, Selenium, Appium, Behave, Test Farms, Test Complete, Katalon, and others. It's especially vital for the QA engineer automation role.
Familiarity with the specifics of software packages, web apps, mobile apps, Windows apps, and other software programs
Experience in working with bug-tracking systems
Knowledge of web testing tools and techniques
Knowledge of QA testing technologies, for instance, Jira, Azure DevOps, SOAP UI, etc
Database knowledge
Familiarity with SQL and scripting
Ability to define quality standards and procedures to achieve them
Expertise working in an Agile environment and knowledge of how to streamline the QA process
Ability to analyze, define and report issues during the QA process
Ability to recognize potential issues and risks
Familiarity with interface design principles for reliability and usability

However, technical QA skills alone are not sufficient. Soft skills are also crucial for someone to succeed in the QA role. Some of the required soft QA skills include:

Analytical QA skills

While certain individuals may have a natural inclination towards specific mindsets, the role of the QA engineer test requires enhanced analytical skills, which can be achieved through practice.

Communication QA skills

Effective communication plays a vital role in faring well in QA roles, including strong verbal and written communication skills. To hire a skilled QA tester engineer, look for the following skills:

Solid communication skills, both verbally and in writing
Ability to write a comprehensive and detailed documentation
Familiarity with documenting risk assessments
Knowledge of proper tracking test progress and documenting outcomes
Ability to work under tight deadlines and demonstrate strong time management skills

Effective teamwork

Whether you are hiring a sole QA tester engineer or a team of QA engineers, collaboration with other team members, including product managers, developers, and department heads is crucial. Your hire needs to have the ability to explain issues, propose solutions, and work with team members who require more familiarity with the software. With that in mind, the following QA skills are necessary:

High adaptability and flexibility
Being proactive, self-motivated, and taking initiative when needed
Persistent in problem-solving
The ability to effectively collaborate with development teams

What does a QA engineer do?

QA responsibilities are an indispensable cog in the delivery of high-quality software products. In general, QA responsibilities and roles include developing and implementing test plans, test cases, and test scripts, as well as executing various testing techniques. So, what do QA engineers do?

Preventing problems

The main QA responsibility is to ensure the highest quality of the end software product. This involves identifying and reporting issues during all SDLC stages. Thus, quality testing engineers provide valuable feedback to the team through requirement analysis, design, development, and UI/UX reviews as well as handle risk assessment.

Moreover, through thorough quality control, the development team can save time and money by identifying potential issues, bottlenecks, vulnerabilities, etc early on. As such, risk assessment helps identify and prevent potential issues during SDLC, and the role of QA is vital for that.

Creating and executing test plans

Another crucial QA responsibility is creating effective test plans. These plans aim to ensure the software meets both the tech criteria and customer requirements. To develop successful test plans, a deep understanding of the software's architecture and customer journey is essential. This includes functional and non-functional testing, covering areas like performance, security, and usability.

The responsibilities of QA experts span the following types of testing:

Functional testing: Ensuring software functionality functions properly
Acceptance testing: Checking software for its compliance with initial requirements
Regression testing: Testing software to ensure that bug fixes don't affect its functionality
Performance testing: Verifying software functions properly under heavy load conditions
Security testing: Checking if the software is susceptible to potential risks and threats

QA engineers should be able to execute all of these tests, document, and report issues to the development team.

Identifying and reporting issues

Someone in the QA role should identify and report issues (also known as bugs) that arise during software testing. When conducting tests, QA engineers document and report bugs. For this purpose, they should be able to use bug-tracking systems, for instance, Jira. Tools like Jira enable the development team to prioritize and allocate resources for prompt issue resolution.

Managing bugs and retesting

After QA engineers identify and record bugs, the tech team prioritizes them based on their impact on the product. Then, the development team resolves the issues in order of their priority. The role of QA in this process is to conduct testing to verify the fixes.

Bug management includes tracking and reporting on the status of each issue, also known as writing "bug reports." QA engineers are also responsible for regular updates to keep the team informed about the progress of bug management.

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Automating tests

A QA engineer automation creates and manages automated tests. The role of an automated QA engineer is to uncover hard-to-find issues that may be missed during manual testing. To that end, an automation QA engineer applies multiple automation tools we mentioned above.

Automated tests serve several purposes:

Speeding up the QA process
Enhancing test coverage
Ensuring continuous test execution
Reducing human error
Handling complex testing scenarios

As such the role of a QA engineer automation is essential for any development team.

A typical job description for a QA engineer

In this section, we'll cover an example of a standard QA engineer job description you can come across on job boards.

Requirements for QA role:

At least 2 years of work experience in software quality assurance
Understanding of all phases of the QA cycle
In-depth knowledge of software QA methodologies, tools, and processes
Experience with Jira, TestRail, or related technologies
Knowledge of Selenium-based automation testing frameworks
Excellent analytic, problem-solving, and communication skills
BS degree in Computer Science or related engineering degree
Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, and communication abilities
Working effectively as part of a team
A strong sense of responsibility and accountability

Responsibilities:

Conducting requirements analysis and processing
Designing and implementing a wide variety of test scripts
Creating and executing test cases, checklists, and other relevant test documentation
Performing functional and regression testing
Delivering project quality throughout the entire development lifecycle

As you can see, a typical job description for a QA engineer includes a minimum of 2 years of work experience in software quality assurance, a comprehensive understanding of all phases of the QA cycle, and proficient knowledge of software QA methodologies, tools, and processes. If you require candidates like this, we at Hiretop can be of help.

Hire QA engineers with Hiretop

We can assist you in both meeting your budget requirements for QA engineers and rapidly building your QA team. We specialize in sourcing QA talent, including manual and automated QA engineers from Eastern European countries such as Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and the Baltics. These highly skilled QA engineers can seamlessly integrate into your team on a remote basis. Contact us and let’s discuss your tech talent needs.