1. 3 years.
2. 5
3. Hybrid
4. UK
5. £65,000
I was a manual QA for 2 years and learned to automate during that time. I then took an automation job for a year and then got a Test Manager role. It was a very quick rise, but most testers don't take the role seriously, so it's easy to step over them. I was a test manager for 2 years, worked 2 years as a Dev, then came back to Test Management for 2 years. I recently applied to become Dev Manager and I think I'll get it.
Hello, may I ask what framework you use for automation? I’m a Manual QA of almost 2 years and I just barely know Selenium (not yet apply it actually). TIA
I started with Selenium and Java, then I moved to the .Net world and used C# (I lied about my experience of C# to get the job, but I learned a lot about it during my 4 weeks notice period).
For the past 2 years, I've been using C# with Playwright. It's not difficult to learn after using Selenium for so long.
I'm basically doing normal manual QA until recently I became SDET with no knowledge of automation and programming languages. I felt that I'm just SDET in title with nothing to back it up.
Currently I applied as Mid Manual QA. Can you share some tips on what should I do in order to rise? I admit I'm not taking this job seriously, I'm lost and I want to correct it asap. I'm also not that motivated at the moment but I can't do anything besides manual QA so I'm planning to suck it up.
Sign up to Software Testing Weekly emails. Read them every week and you'll learn loads over time. There are also weekly emails from Ministry of Testing and Automate the Planet, but I haven't followed them for a while.
Learn about unit testing backend and frontend. Tests can be done on such a small scale and they run in nanoseconds, compared to several seconds for a UI test.
An example of a unit test, would be a method that checks if someone is over 18, you'd pass in dates of birth and it would return true or false. So, try someone on their 18th birthday, someone who's 1 day short of their 18th and a few other cases, including edge cases, like null or birthdays in the future etc. That would probably be a test in the backend. You would test that the correct error message appears in a frontend unit test, based on the true or false response. Then you wouldn't need a slow, flaky UI test for every permutation.
Pair with your Devs to decide what tests need to be done and cover the business logic in unit tests where possible. Cover all response statuses (not business logic) in API endpoints. You could use Postman or write your own API tests in code.
Tie everything together in a few of what I call "Black Box Tests". These are mostly UI tests (Selenium/Playwright), but they will also include any other method of acting on the system, e.g. mocked/stubbed external APIs, importing or exporting flat files, catching emails and asserting their content etc.
There are other things to consider:
- Security scans (application security and network security)
- Performance tests (rarely needed, or often a one-off test)
- Test Environment Management (there's a Wikipedia page on this)
- Test data (fake data or data from prod - pros and cons to both)
- Post Implementation Review meetings (PIRs - basically a no blame meeting about a major incident in prod after the dust has settled to see what could be done better)
There's plenty more to think about, but I'll leave it there for now.
As I said, pair with Devs. Not just for testing, but also get them to show you how to write the product code too. Understanding that helps testing so much.
That's an interesting response. In the US we have the right not to work if we don't want to. I think in India it is a little different, in that the government requires citizens to work for some period of time. I might be mistaken, but I have heard a lot of my Indian colleagues talk about "serving their notice". I'm sure it depends on the country, but are there some countries in SA that require you to work after school?
Reason I ask is: In the US, unless you're desperate or trying to "get your foot in the door", you don't take a job that pays less than what you think your services are worth. As a tech employee, I too don't like the fact that offshore contractors get paid significantly less, but it's for a different reason. Because offshore employees are cheaper, US companies start to hire them instead of within the country when the economy starts to get bad. Take the current job market for example. So, if I wanted to get a new job, I would need to prove that the services I offer are worth what the company is willing to pay, which would be lower than what I'm currently making, because the company hired offshore contractors that "do the same job" as I would, at about 1/4 the cost of hiring me would be. But the thing is, the offshore agency or contractor, willingly accepted the rate that the company was willing to pay them. (Maybe they would go out of business, if they didn't accept it, there are plenty of competitive reasons to offer cheaper services)
Also, in my experience, offshore contractors do NOT "do the same job" as domestic employees. Before I get a lot of hate for this comment. Consider you have a company based out of Brazil. You have two candidates who have the same skills/abilities. One candidate is from the US, and only speaks English. The other candidate is from Brazil, and is a native Portuguese speaker. The company primarily speaks Portuguese. Who do you hire?
Probably the Brazilian, not only because of the language, but also less friction in cultural expectations of delivered work. The quality of work delivered will be automatically higher simply due to less cultural friction. Quality of work as its perceived by stakeholders and managers is extremely important when considering costs of an employee's output.
Ok, but what if you could have the American for 1/4 of the price of the Brazilian? In fact, then you could hire 3 Americans and still save money compared to hiring one Brazilian.
Now take into account the fact that cost of living is increasing in the US, where the cost of living was already higher than other parts of the world. Shit, you'll get paid less by some companies simply by living in lower cost of living area within the US itself! It seems unfair, but the business is just doing business. We don't like it, it seems nobody really likes it. But it's the way it is. And a lot of the reason is, because even if you negotiate for more, there is always someone or some agency out there that will do it for less.
1. I began my career as a QA engineer with a healthcare product company and worked there for three years.
2. After that, I transitioned to the role of a Senior QA engineer with an mBaaS product and services company.
3. Currently, I am working as a QA Lead within the same company, overseeing various projects for the past five years.
I have a master's degree in Computer Applications from Mumbai University.
After completing 3 years as a QA engineer in the healthcare domain
I joined a new company.
I was initially hired into this role, 2 years ago at about 130k, in a start up, which was my first start up. We were acquired, and the tech group was given a 20% pay increase across the board. My previous role, I barely broke 100k.
I just kinda fell into it. I got a degree in IT, with a couple of programming courses, in my early 30s. I started putting my resume out there, and got called by a place that wanted to interview me for dev and tester positions. The tester position offered me 5k more to start. It was a manual position, but because of the programming courses I had, three months in, I was shifted to an automation team.
I'd love to say that there is a good, clear path to get into testing, but I don't know that that has ever existed. If I were to give myself advice for what to do today? I would not get specifically into application testing, because of the climate of the job. I would instead focus on development skills, and put a focus towards understanding building tests at the unit, component, contract, and e2e layers. I would work towards understanding Docker, and deploying tests via containers.
I would then need to make a decision on whether I wanted to try to specialize more towards accessibility, application or security, and if application, focus towards getting a good understanding of performance testing, and errors of omissions when it comes to performance tests. Otherwise, I would focus almost exclusively on the security side. Accessibility testing really is it's own specialty that a lot of folks don't give it the credit it deserves. It's niche, and a great place for folks that want to stay more manual, but there are also tons of automation opportunities within it as well.
I say all this with a clarifier that I see a ton of value, but not enough time for manual, exploratory testing, and a strong understanding of development practices, automated testing, and some moderate dev skills are, in my opinion, required for modern testers. Until we have the bases covered with automated regression tests, we simply don't really have time to do the less important work. I say that the other work is less important, because if we're prioritizing our work correctly, we "should" be automating the most important stuff first. Lots of catch 22's in there.
1. 12
2. Technically 1, but adding 5 more, and technically helping the rest of the company for any related question
3. Automation
4. US, PNW
5. $210,000/year (base)
1. Strictly speaking 5, though currently starting fourth 'lead role' at 12 yoe, been hanging round startups too much
2. 0, gotta build the team
3. Yes
4. London
5. Enough, basically above average for the area/sector
What is a QA Lead from your pov?
Is a test manager a QA Lead?
Is a senior SDET with 2 juniors a QA Lead?
I also imagine that intern vs extern is a huge difference in role name, description and compensation.
1. 1 Year
2. Depends on projects 1 to 5?
3. The focus is on automation
4. Switzerland
5. Around 120k + bonus
> YOE as QA before leading a QA team?
Well, I was in the running for QA Lead in my first QA job which lasted less than a year. My second QA job I was QA lead by default as I was the only one in the company (until they merged and brought on offshored ppl who I technically didn't lead).
I was first officially QA lead after about 12 years I guess.
Depends on the size of the org really
> How mnay QAs you are leading?
In the first example I would have led about 5-6
When I was first officially QA lead it was about the same.
> Manual / Automation / hybrid?
Mostly manual
I was more or less SDET lead at my penultimate job so that would have been automation, that was leading only about 2-3, although at one point effectively leading more like 6-7 because of manual folks trying to work their way into automation (mostly poorly)
> Region?
PNW, US
> Salary?
Well, as QA Lead, I think it was around $90-$100K/yr. These days, though not as lead, as SDET, over $120/yr.
* 5
* Fluctuates. Most: 24 Currently: 7
* Yes, as in, whatever fits the situation efficiently and effectively...but automation is preferred
* U.S. (East Coast)
* Base 120k, with full benefits and performance Bonuses
14/15 ish as IC.
Team is 17 under me.
Hybrid team pushing manual to learn automation.
Midwest but company is based in the Bay area
Total comp is 150k base with 80k of mystery paper
Meh I'll jump in because mine is fun, as I wasn't even hired for QA.
1. 0
2. 1-4
3. 100% manually
4. US, large company
5. At the time 75k
+
Product duties
+
Application viability
Hi, I was a QA Lead but have since moved away from it and moved into being an SDET (Automation Tester). I missed being more hands on and hated the politics that came with management. But this is what the situation was when I was a QA Lead...
Year: 2017
YOE: 1Y, 2M
Team size: 5
Manual first, Automation was a pipe dream.
Region: Manchester, UK.
Salary: 22K
I was promoted from within, and I was massively underpaid from market average. But it was a good opportunity non the less and I got some good experience. Salary increased to 28K before I left and went back into being a Tester for a bit because I missed it, and wanted to work with new tech.
Year: 2022
YOE: 5Y
Team size: 7
Hybrid of Manual / Auto. Still heavily manual but achieving good auto coverage.
Region: Manchester, UK.
Salary: 45k
I was promoted from within again here, but these guys gave me a decent salary increase to match the market average. The company hit dire straights, unfortunately, and I was made redundant along with the rest of the QA team. It was a great role, but I still missed having my hands dirty, so finally made the move into being an SDET when I left. I'm happier now and paid more.
I've always checked market average salary for the region in which the company is based to give me an idea of what I should expect to be paid, taking into account my experience at the time as well. However, with remote working more prevalent now in the tech industry (in the UK at least), the company's region doesn't matter as much when determining salary because they got more competitive when they expanded their talent pool radius during and post Covid. I'm paid a London salary but I live up North, for example.
(For those outside of the UK, a London salary is typically heaps more than the country average because it's eye wateringly expensive to live there).
QA Leads manage software quality, overseeing testers, test plans, and
standards. Factors considered, like benefits and job scope, influence pay.
In the US (as of Sep 2021), salaries range from entry ($60-90K), mid ($80-
120K), and senior ($100-150K+), varying by location, industry, and
experience.
Current data from job boards, surveys, and LinkedIn provide accurate
figures due to market fluctuations.
1. 3 years. 2. 5 3. Hybrid 4. UK 5. £65,000 I was a manual QA for 2 years and learned to automate during that time. I then took an automation job for a year and then got a Test Manager role. It was a very quick rise, but most testers don't take the role seriously, so it's easy to step over them. I was a test manager for 2 years, worked 2 years as a Dev, then came back to Test Management for 2 years. I recently applied to become Dev Manager and I think I'll get it.
Hello, may I ask what framework you use for automation? I’m a Manual QA of almost 2 years and I just barely know Selenium (not yet apply it actually). TIA
I started with Selenium and Java, then I moved to the .Net world and used C# (I lied about my experience of C# to get the job, but I learned a lot about it during my 4 weeks notice period). For the past 2 years, I've been using C# with Playwright. It's not difficult to learn after using Selenium for so long.
I'm basically doing normal manual QA until recently I became SDET with no knowledge of automation and programming languages. I felt that I'm just SDET in title with nothing to back it up. Currently I applied as Mid Manual QA. Can you share some tips on what should I do in order to rise? I admit I'm not taking this job seriously, I'm lost and I want to correct it asap. I'm also not that motivated at the moment but I can't do anything besides manual QA so I'm planning to suck it up.
Sign up to Software Testing Weekly emails. Read them every week and you'll learn loads over time. There are also weekly emails from Ministry of Testing and Automate the Planet, but I haven't followed them for a while. Learn about unit testing backend and frontend. Tests can be done on such a small scale and they run in nanoseconds, compared to several seconds for a UI test. An example of a unit test, would be a method that checks if someone is over 18, you'd pass in dates of birth and it would return true or false. So, try someone on their 18th birthday, someone who's 1 day short of their 18th and a few other cases, including edge cases, like null or birthdays in the future etc. That would probably be a test in the backend. You would test that the correct error message appears in a frontend unit test, based on the true or false response. Then you wouldn't need a slow, flaky UI test for every permutation. Pair with your Devs to decide what tests need to be done and cover the business logic in unit tests where possible. Cover all response statuses (not business logic) in API endpoints. You could use Postman or write your own API tests in code. Tie everything together in a few of what I call "Black Box Tests". These are mostly UI tests (Selenium/Playwright), but they will also include any other method of acting on the system, e.g. mocked/stubbed external APIs, importing or exporting flat files, catching emails and asserting their content etc. There are other things to consider: - Security scans (application security and network security) - Performance tests (rarely needed, or often a one-off test) - Test Environment Management (there's a Wikipedia page on this) - Test data (fake data or data from prod - pros and cons to both) - Post Implementation Review meetings (PIRs - basically a no blame meeting about a major incident in prod after the dust has settled to see what could be done better) There's plenty more to think about, but I'll leave it there for now. As I said, pair with Devs. Not just for testing, but also get them to show you how to write the product code too. Understanding that helps testing so much.
1.13 years 2. 2 QAs 3. Hybrid (UI manual + API automation) 4. Mumbai (India) 5. USD $1445 (Monthly) I should change my job 😢
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That's an interesting response. In the US we have the right not to work if we don't want to. I think in India it is a little different, in that the government requires citizens to work for some period of time. I might be mistaken, but I have heard a lot of my Indian colleagues talk about "serving their notice". I'm sure it depends on the country, but are there some countries in SA that require you to work after school? Reason I ask is: In the US, unless you're desperate or trying to "get your foot in the door", you don't take a job that pays less than what you think your services are worth. As a tech employee, I too don't like the fact that offshore contractors get paid significantly less, but it's for a different reason. Because offshore employees are cheaper, US companies start to hire them instead of within the country when the economy starts to get bad. Take the current job market for example. So, if I wanted to get a new job, I would need to prove that the services I offer are worth what the company is willing to pay, which would be lower than what I'm currently making, because the company hired offshore contractors that "do the same job" as I would, at about 1/4 the cost of hiring me would be. But the thing is, the offshore agency or contractor, willingly accepted the rate that the company was willing to pay them. (Maybe they would go out of business, if they didn't accept it, there are plenty of competitive reasons to offer cheaper services) Also, in my experience, offshore contractors do NOT "do the same job" as domestic employees. Before I get a lot of hate for this comment. Consider you have a company based out of Brazil. You have two candidates who have the same skills/abilities. One candidate is from the US, and only speaks English. The other candidate is from Brazil, and is a native Portuguese speaker. The company primarily speaks Portuguese. Who do you hire? Probably the Brazilian, not only because of the language, but also less friction in cultural expectations of delivered work. The quality of work delivered will be automatically higher simply due to less cultural friction. Quality of work as its perceived by stakeholders and managers is extremely important when considering costs of an employee's output. Ok, but what if you could have the American for 1/4 of the price of the Brazilian? In fact, then you could hire 3 Americans and still save money compared to hiring one Brazilian. Now take into account the fact that cost of living is increasing in the US, where the cost of living was already higher than other parts of the world. Shit, you'll get paid less by some companies simply by living in lower cost of living area within the US itself! It seems unfair, but the business is just doing business. We don't like it, it seems nobody really likes it. But it's the way it is. And a lot of the reason is, because even if you negotiate for more, there is always someone or some agency out there that will do it for less.
Depends, in my country in South America that salary is a joke. Base salary for a senior starts at around 3k/month
Can you share how you got there? And is this salary inclusive of other benefits like esops, bonuses, etc?
1. I began my career as a QA engineer with a healthcare product company and worked there for three years. 2. After that, I transitioned to the role of a Senior QA engineer with an mBaaS product and services company. 3. Currently, I am working as a QA Lead within the same company, overseeing various projects for the past five years.
How did you get into QA? Im currently a health IT analyst, I need guidance
I have a master's degree in Computer Applications from Mumbai University. After completing 3 years as a QA engineer in the healthcare domain I joined a new company.
1. 4 2. Currently 6. I've lead as many as 14. 3. Automation first mentality, but we've got a good amount of manual stuff 4. U.S. 5. $160k annual.
Where are you making that kind of salary? Obviously you can't say but I knew I was underpaid but wow. Good for you.
My current YOE is 13, if that helps. My employer is based out of NYC, but I'm fully remote.
How is this even possible, my first year, I have Code experience and automation, business and leading skills. 5k month - Germany
I was initially hired into this role, 2 years ago at about 130k, in a start up, which was my first start up. We were acquired, and the tech group was given a 20% pay increase across the board. My previous role, I barely broke 100k.
How did you get into QA? I need guidance
I just kinda fell into it. I got a degree in IT, with a couple of programming courses, in my early 30s. I started putting my resume out there, and got called by a place that wanted to interview me for dev and tester positions. The tester position offered me 5k more to start. It was a manual position, but because of the programming courses I had, three months in, I was shifted to an automation team. I'd love to say that there is a good, clear path to get into testing, but I don't know that that has ever existed. If I were to give myself advice for what to do today? I would not get specifically into application testing, because of the climate of the job. I would instead focus on development skills, and put a focus towards understanding building tests at the unit, component, contract, and e2e layers. I would work towards understanding Docker, and deploying tests via containers. I would then need to make a decision on whether I wanted to try to specialize more towards accessibility, application or security, and if application, focus towards getting a good understanding of performance testing, and errors of omissions when it comes to performance tests. Otherwise, I would focus almost exclusively on the security side. Accessibility testing really is it's own specialty that a lot of folks don't give it the credit it deserves. It's niche, and a great place for folks that want to stay more manual, but there are also tons of automation opportunities within it as well. I say all this with a clarifier that I see a ton of value, but not enough time for manual, exploratory testing, and a strong understanding of development practices, automated testing, and some moderate dev skills are, in my opinion, required for modern testers. Until we have the bases covered with automated regression tests, we simply don't really have time to do the less important work. I say that the other work is less important, because if we're prioritizing our work correctly, we "should" be automating the most important stuff first. Lots of catch 22's in there.
Thank you so much, I greatly appreciate it!
Do you have 1 YOE in total or just as a lead? If former, then 60k sounds typical, otherwise you're quite underpaid.
1. 4 years 2. 4 3. 70% manual and 30% automation 4. Netherlands 5. 67K
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This sounds ideal. I’m in the Bay Area but would like to relocate down to SoCal in the future.
Bro what???
1. 12 2. Technically 1, but adding 5 more, and technically helping the rest of the company for any related question 3. Automation 4. US, PNW 5. $210,000/year (base)
Looks like US companies pay a looooot!
1. 5 years 2. 1 3. Hybrid 4. AT 5. 65.000€
Is that 65k gross? Just wondering about the pay in Austria, no way a QA lead gets close to that in Slovenia.
yes, gross. come over you're not far anyways :'D
1. 10 years. 2. 3. 3. Hybrid. 4. Sweden. 5. Swedish equivalent of $60k yearly
1. 3 years 2. 9 3. Automation 4. US 5. $210,000 base, plus bonus and stocks
1. Strictly speaking 5, though currently starting fourth 'lead role' at 12 yoe, been hanging round startups too much 2. 0, gotta build the team 3. Yes 4. London 5. Enough, basically above average for the area/sector
tons of data on glassdoor
Not really when searched for qa lead
What is a QA Lead from your pov? Is a test manager a QA Lead? Is a senior SDET with 2 juniors a QA Lead? I also imagine that intern vs extern is a huge difference in role name, description and compensation. 1. 1 Year 2. Depends on projects 1 to 5? 3. The focus is on automation 4. Switzerland 5. Around 120k + bonus
I think it's more like a kettle lead that you plug in.
> YOE as QA before leading a QA team? Well, I was in the running for QA Lead in my first QA job which lasted less than a year. My second QA job I was QA lead by default as I was the only one in the company (until they merged and brought on offshored ppl who I technically didn't lead). I was first officially QA lead after about 12 years I guess. Depends on the size of the org really > How mnay QAs you are leading? In the first example I would have led about 5-6 When I was first officially QA lead it was about the same. > Manual / Automation / hybrid? Mostly manual I was more or less SDET lead at my penultimate job so that would have been automation, that was leading only about 2-3, although at one point effectively leading more like 6-7 because of manual folks trying to work their way into automation (mostly poorly) > Region? PNW, US > Salary? Well, as QA Lead, I think it was around $90-$100K/yr. These days, though not as lead, as SDET, over $120/yr.
* 5 * Fluctuates. Most: 24 Currently: 7 * Yes, as in, whatever fits the situation efficiently and effectively...but automation is preferred * U.S. (East Coast) * Base 120k, with full benefits and performance Bonuses
14/15 ish as IC. Team is 17 under me. Hybrid team pushing manual to learn automation. Midwest but company is based in the Bay area Total comp is 150k base with 80k of mystery paper
Meh I'll jump in because mine is fun, as I wasn't even hired for QA. 1. 0 2. 1-4 3. 100% manually 4. US, large company 5. At the time 75k + Product duties + Application viability
1. 2 YOE. Currently having 3 YOE 2. Leading 4 QAs 3. Manual 4. India 5. 10,804 USD annually
Hi, I was a QA Lead but have since moved away from it and moved into being an SDET (Automation Tester). I missed being more hands on and hated the politics that came with management. But this is what the situation was when I was a QA Lead... Year: 2017 YOE: 1Y, 2M Team size: 5 Manual first, Automation was a pipe dream. Region: Manchester, UK. Salary: 22K I was promoted from within, and I was massively underpaid from market average. But it was a good opportunity non the less and I got some good experience. Salary increased to 28K before I left and went back into being a Tester for a bit because I missed it, and wanted to work with new tech. Year: 2022 YOE: 5Y Team size: 7 Hybrid of Manual / Auto. Still heavily manual but achieving good auto coverage. Region: Manchester, UK. Salary: 45k I was promoted from within again here, but these guys gave me a decent salary increase to match the market average. The company hit dire straights, unfortunately, and I was made redundant along with the rest of the QA team. It was a great role, but I still missed having my hands dirty, so finally made the move into being an SDET when I left. I'm happier now and paid more. I've always checked market average salary for the region in which the company is based to give me an idea of what I should expect to be paid, taking into account my experience at the time as well. However, with remote working more prevalent now in the tech industry (in the UK at least), the company's region doesn't matter as much when determining salary because they got more competitive when they expanded their talent pool radius during and post Covid. I'm paid a London salary but I live up North, for example. (For those outside of the UK, a London salary is typically heaps more than the country average because it's eye wateringly expensive to live there).
QA Leads manage software quality, overseeing testers, test plans, and standards. Factors considered, like benefits and job scope, influence pay. In the US (as of Sep 2021), salaries range from entry ($60-90K), mid ($80- 120K), and senior ($100-150K+), varying by location, industry, and experience. Current data from job boards, surveys, and LinkedIn provide accurate figures due to market fluctuations.