PASV - IT школа в США

Not every task should be left to machines. Sometimes, to check the quality and performance of a finished product, you have to step into the user's role and walk their path: wander through the pages, try filling in the forms, hunt with particular care for defects in an application or a site, and report what you find. A QA engineer takes on that responsibility. Without padding or long preamble, let's go through what a manual tester's responsibilities are and how to become one.

What a QA engineer does

If the developer is responsible for building software and making it convenient, the QA engineer is the specialist responsible for the quality of the finished product. At first glance that seems simple enough, but let's unpack what quality means. It covers whether the software meets what users expect, its security, its reliability and its functionality.

A tech specialist who does not write code

Testing genuinely does not require the ability to write code. But a QA engineer has no fewer responsibilities than anyone else in tech:

They determine the criteria the product will be tested against and which methods and strategy will be used.
They do not write program code, but they do write the test scenarios, setting out step by step what will be done.
A QA engineer checks software by hand, and that takes the lion's share of their working time.
Having found a defect, they track it, analyse it and judge how critical it is.
They have to communicate well with colleagues. In particular they need to find an approach to the developers and be on the same wavelength. They are responsible for making the nature of a defect clear so that it can be fixed effectively.
They are also responsible for checking how well the software matches the specifications, the technical requirements and what users need.

Technology never stops developing, and specialists working with software have to keep up with new methods, practices and approaches in their field. That shows both in the results of their work and in their value as professionals. We will give courses their own section later in this article.

Does manual testing pay well?

The second most common question after what a QA engineer is, is what they earn. The profession genuinely does pay well, because the work carries a great deal of responsibility, requires distinctive skills, and draws on the most valuable thing of all — a person's own knowledge, experience and attention, which no machine will replace.

The arithmetic is fairly simple. Income depends on experience and qualifications, on the region and on the standing of the company. Beginners in the USA earn from $30,000 a year, while a senior QA engineer can earn around $100,000 and above. If your resume combines QA engineering with a course from a school with a good reputation, you will be a more attractive candidate and will be offered a higher salary even with comparatively little experience. There are also good prospects for specialists moving over from other corners of tech who already know something of the areas testing touches.

The skills manual testing requires

Which brings us to what employers look for in a candidate for a manual testing role:

An understanding of the software development cycle.
A thorough grasp of the types of testing: functional, regression, security and performance, integration.
The ability to work with Jira, Postman and TestRail.

Expectations do not end with the technical questions. A QA engineer needs a set of personal qualities that let them do the job well:

Analytical ability and logical thinking.
Attention to detail.
Communication skills and the ability to work in a team.
Managing their own time properly and prioritising the work.
A readiness to keep learning and to adapt to new methods and tools.

Where the career can go

With the picture of what a QA engineer does now assembled, let's go briefly through the ways specialists in this field develop.

Option 1: grow vertically from junior to lead QA.
Option 2: concentrate on one area — security, performance and so on.
Option 3: having acquired testing skills, move into adjacent fields such as quality analysis, coaching or consulting, management and project management.

Learning manual testing from working QA engineers

The final and most interesting part of the article: how do you actually train as a manual tester? Here a specialist school is the best option:

It gives you all the knowledge and skills you need to get hired.
Courses taught by working programmers cover current material and come with attractive job prospects.
Classes are online, so you can fit them around your current job.
Courses where you work on real projects give you invaluable experience you can put on your resume.

The PASV QA engineer course

A QA engineering course, like any other, should meet a standard and teach properly. At PASV you can gain everything you need to get hired. Sign up, and in four months you will have every chance of being offered a QA engineer role at an international company.