How to Become a QA Engineer (or QA Tester) in 2026

You've been there: a website or app is supposed to work, and it just… doesn't. At best, it's frustrating. A site's text might run off the side of the page so you can't read it. At worst, it keeps you from vital digital services: a login error on your doctor's site can stop you from seeing the results of an important test.

A quality assurance (QA) engineer's job is to spot and flag those issues before they reach users. That's why companies want skilled QA specialists on their teams, and the data backs up how valuable these roles are:

• Software quality assurance analyst and tester jobs are projected to grow 6% from 2025 to 2035, twice the 3% average for all occupations, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
• In LambdaTest's 2023 survey of 1,615 testing professionals, 40% of large companies said they spend more than 25% of their budget on testing.
• The same survey found that 71.5% of organizations involve testers in sprint planning sessions, a sign that QA expertise now shapes strategy, too.

Companies need QA testers, they'll need more of them, and those testers won't just point out bugs. They'll help guide software development as a whole. So if you're wondering how to become a QA engineer (or a quality assurance engineer, software tester, or QA analyst, as the role is also called), let's get into it.

What is a QA engineer?

A QA engineer is a tech specialist who tests software to make sure it works as intended and meets its requirements. They work closely with the development team, flagging issues that developers then fix. Testing can be done with scripts (automated testing) or by testers imitating how users behave (manual testing).

QA engineer vs. QA tester

QA engineers typically take on higher-level tasks than QA testers. They design test strategies, write automated tests, and focus on the organization's overall quality process so bugs don't crop up in the first place. A QA tester, on the other hand, carries out the tests the QA engineer sets up and spends more of their time running them.

Note: Not every company follows this split. Read QA tester job descriptions closely. They'll tell you more about a role's responsibilities than the title does.

What does a quality assurance engineer do?

QA engineers plan, design, and run tests to make sure products meet quality standards. They work with stakeholders to build a testing strategy, then help carry it out by finding and documenting bugs through manual and automated testing across the development lifecycle, so the dev team can fix them. They play a crucial role in making sure the final product works and meets requirements.

QA engineer job description: key responsibilities

• Requirement analysis: Working with stakeholders to figure out what the product is supposed to do.
• Test planning and design: Building a testing strategy, then writing the tests that carry it out.
• Bug detection and documentation: Finding issues in the product and documenting them for the dev team.
• Process monitoring: Making sure testing keeps pace with the agreed plan.
• Communication and collaboration: Staying in touch with stakeholders and the dev team throughout the process for product updates and feedback on issues.

A day in the life of a QA Engineer 

To give you a sense of what someone in a QA role might do throughout the day, we’ve built out a mock schedule of tasks to illustrate what QA testing is and what you might expect from a job in this field. As a reminder, this is general — each job will have its own quirks and specifics.

Morning

Days in QA tend to start with check-ins of all sorts. First, people in QA might sit at their desk (in the office or at their home office) with their cup of coffee and check their emails as well as the bug tracking systems to see if anything’s happened overnight. Many companies have distributed workforces, so something that was reported the previous day might have been resolved overnight by someone on the dev team who’s located in another time zone.

There’s also typically a short morning meeting that’s known as a stand-up. The QA team will come together to share what happened the previous day, what they’re working on that day, try to mitigate blockers, and quickly discuss anything that needs people to come together face-to-face (even via videocall) to solve.

If they had time before the call, they might have verified that the fixes that came in overnight have addressed the issues reported the previous day. If not, they’ll typically tackle these checks after the stand-up. This might also include a basic test of the most important functions (think log-in, adding an item to the cart, opening the app or website) that’s known as a smoke test.

Following that, they may test new features, follow up on previous test cases, or do exploratory testing and find edge cases that need to be addressed.

Midday

Lunchtime. Yes, we’re including this in the schedule because the work of people in QA isn’t typically dependent on the exact hours they’re at work. Rather, what typically matters is getting their tasks done, and that is often up to the discretion of the people tackling those tasks. Just take it from Michael Reasoner, a TripleTen QA grad. He used to work a job that was draconian about his hours at work, but when he switched to QA, he found a much more humane approach to his schedule:

There's actual teamwork. There's actual camaraderie. If you have a doctor's appointment, they're not going to ask you, ‘Can you move it?’ Michael Reasoner, TripleTen grad

But we don’t want to give you unrealistic expectations, so even during lunch, QA engineers might also sometimes answer urgent questions from the dev team who need more clarification on the bugs reported, and sometimes teammates will also get in touch asking to verify that the bug they’ve spotted isn’t something local to them.

The point still stands, though: as a QA tester or engineer, you’re most likely going to have enough flexibility to step away for a quick refresh and a bite to eat.

Afternoon

After lunch, people in QA might get more focused on the actual meat of their work: digging into and documenting bugs. If they spotted anything significant in their morning checks, they might take screenshots, try to reproduce the error in other environments, and determine just how severe the bug is, i.e., will this keep people from buying a product (severe), or will this make a design element look wonky (less severe)? This will all be logged in a tracking system (Jira, for example), which will likely automatically escalate the ticket they make to the proper expert.

If they’re in QA automation, this might also be the time when people write or update the scripts that will test things that would be tedious or impossible for one human to manage alone, such as stress testing, during which requests in excess of what the system is designed to handle come in. One person can’t generate millions of requests, so a QA automation engineer will write a script that can.

There may also be discussions during this time. Developers may ask for more details about bugs, fellow QA workers might ask for help reproducing something they spotted, and there may even be meetings about future projects and testing approaches if the worker is on the strategic side of QA.

Late afternoon

Wrapping up the day, QA engineers and testers might run regression tests. These are verifications that the new code has left everything functional and hasn’t introduced any wild or unexpected new errors. If there are new bugs, people in QA follow the typical routine: documenting and reporting the issues as usual.

A day in QA will often end with setting up work for the morning: checking in on tickets in the tracking system to make sure everything’s as it should be, updating documentation, and planning out the tests to run or come back to when they return.

Of course, there’s going to be variation

Now, this is all for a typical day on a typical week. But things can change. For example, if you end up at a company developing a software product, depending on where a product is in its lifecycle, the focus of this work might shift. 

For example, at the planning stages, there’ll be more time spent discussing when, how, and which tests should be carried out. Then, as the product continues its development, this balance will shift more towards the actual testing side of things up until release week, which will likely be full of unexpected discoveries, regression testing, and all-hands-on-deck bug spotting and verification.

So even if the daily description might sound staid and static, there can indeed be significant dynamism within a QA role.

How to become a QA engineer or QA tester

Now that you know what QA professionals do, let's get into how to break into QA testing in the first place.

What qualifications do you need to become a QA engineer?

There's no single set of QA engineer requirements. It's not a pound cake, after all; it's a career. The same goes if you're figuring out how to become a QA analyst. Still, there are some basic quality assurance engineer qualifications you'll want on your resume to convince hiring managers:

Education: do you need a degree?

Do you need a bachelor's degree for a QA career? Not at all. Eric Woodson landed his QA job without a degree. He did go through TripleTen's Quality Assurance program, which gave him the skills to make the move into tech.

To become a QA engineer, you'll need to know what you're doing, so some education in the field is necessary. You can start with free resources such as YouTube tutorials, but as you get serious about switching to QA, you'll want a more structured approach.

A structured program can get you there faster. TripleTen's Quality Assurance program takes 5 months part-time, costs $4,935 upfront, and covers manual testing, API testing, SQL, and test automation with Python, Selenium, and Playwright. You'll finish with portfolio projects to show recruiters.

Required QA engineering skills

As you might guess from the sections above, QA skills are diverse. Here's a quick overview of the ones that matter most:

We listed both manual testing and test automation as hard skills because they're the backbone of any QA career, but they often lead to different paths: manual QA and automated QA. The automation path asks for more scripting or coding skills, usually in JavaScript, Python, or Java, plus familiarity with test automation tools such as Selenium, Cypress, or Playwright.

Which certification is best for QA?

The best QA certification to start with is the ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL). In the US, the exam costs $229 through AT*SQA and has 40 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes. ISTQB certification is also the prerequisite for every higher-level ISTQB credential.

That said, in QA, experience and a strong portfolio prove your abilities more than certifications do. In fields like cybersecurity, certification carries more weight (some government agencies even require it). But QA is all about intentionally and wisely "breaking things," as TripleTen grad Kyle Kolodziej put it, then showing how and why they broke so they can be fixed. A certification is nice, but testing projects in your portfolio show employers you can do the work.

So a portfolio of testing projects will do more for your career prospects than a certification alone. If you want to get into QA fast, prioritize learning the skills you need, then put them into practice with projects you can show recruiters.

QA engineer career path: from QA tester to VP of quality

So where can those qualifications take you? Here's what a QA career path can look like, with median total pay for each role from Glassdoor (September 2026).

Entry level: QA tester, $67,000 median pay

Once you've learned the skills and built projects that prove them, you'll most likely start as an entry-level QA tester. At this stage, you'll do everything we've covered so far, minus the strategic input. You'll write and run test cases, report and document bugs, and work with the dev team as they fix what you've found.

Mid level: SDET (software development engineer in test), $127,000 median pay

This is where you'll start having a say in strategy. You might not lead it yet, but you'll bring your expertise to strategy meetings. You'll likely mentor junior testers, build test frameworks, and design testing approaches for major features. Sometimes you might even lead smaller teams on an ad hoc basis.

SDET roles lean heavily on coding. See where your programming skills stand with our software engineer skills test.

Senior level: QA tech lead, $127,000 median pay / Senior QA manager, $207,000 median pay

Here, your career might branch depending on your interests and strengths. If you want to go deeper into the technical side, you can become a QA tech lead. You'll lead a team testing entire products, or major features if the product is large enough. You'll make the bigger strategic decisions and contribute technical expertise across multiple teams working within your strategy.

If people management appeals to you, you might choose the management track. You'll still help shape QA strategy, but your focus will be leading a team of QA engineers. Your technical background will help you give informed feedback, and you'll also hire new specialists, run performance reviews, and make sure your teams have the processes and infrastructure they need.

Leadership level: VP of quality, $206,000 median pay

You're an executive now. Not every company has a VP of quality, but many tech companies need someone at the top overseeing quality. In this role, you'll launch organization-wide initiatives to improve QA processes over the long term, and you'll work directly with the C-suite (CEO, COO, CTO) to make sure quality factors into the company's biggest strategic decisions. It's a role with significant responsibility, and experienced QA leads and QA managers alike can grow into it.