Job Grades in QA: Common Roles, Skills, and Responsibilities

This post is co-authored with Olha Hladka, a QA Engineer at QA Madness.

There are some subjects in the QA world, an approach to which can vary from company to company. Specialists’ grades in software testing are one of those. To be more specific, the differences between Junior, Middle, and Senior QA engineers often become a subject of heated discussions.

We’ve already shared some ideas on the QA Engineer role and responsibilities recently. So this time, we decided to focus on the distinction between QA grades – a Trainee, a Junior/Middle/Senior QA Engineer, and a QA Lead – and tell more about their proficiencies and responsibilities to help tech companies hire QA engineers effectively.

QA Trainee

Let’s start this overview of the QA roles and responsibilities from the very beginning of the career path. A person with no experience can get a QA Trainee position or an internship in a QA company. At this stage, a person is expected to know the basic theory and have some personal traits necessary for the job.

A trainee has to pass several interviews with different specialists – in particular, with an HR and a tech specialist. During a technical interview, company specialists test a candidate’s knowledge, trying to figure out if this person has the potential to become a new team member.

Some tech companies have courses or temporary unpaid internships. A company provides relevant training and often offers a candidate a job position on successful completion.

QA Trainee’s Responsibilities

The Trainee position implies that there will be a mentor guiding a newbie through the work process. The mentor is a team member ready to explain everything to the Trainee, answer their questions, and assist with all the work-related moments. The mentor, in particular:

• checks the work for errors;
• helps to understand a product better;
• makes sure that the information from the trainee is superimposed correctly.

A trainee gets a chance to improve their skill in writing bug reports, test cases, and other test documentation. The presence of a mentor, however, doesn’t mean that a more experienced co-worker is going to do most of the work. The trainee should be ready to learn and practice on their own as well.

Making notes, expressing interest in the tech details, looking for the necessary information, and delving deeper into the processes will help the trainee advance to a Junior position faster.

The internship is a time of trial and error. As a rule, mistakes are not critical at this stage – they help a specialist to learn. Besides, there are experienced professionals ready to help. The level of responsibility is also lower since trainees aren’t usually engaged in the top-important tasks.

Junior QA Engineer

A Junior QA Engineer is the next step on the career ladder in software QA services. A Trainee who lives up to the expectations advances to the next level upon the internship and becomes the “Junior”. So, the Junior specialist understands the QA processes well and can work independently or with minimal mentor support.

Junior QA Engineer’s Responsibilities

At this stage, some start to believe that there is nothing left to learn. You can perform the basic tasks now and even have access to important project materials! But in fact, the feeling of becoming too skilled is misleading at this point.

As there are a lot of areas of QA knowledge to master your skills, a Junior position is only the beginning of one’s career. Self-confidence is an advantage, but it should be reasonable. Becoming a Junior QA Engineer means that you can solve certain tasks independently and don’t need as much supervision as an Intern usually does.

Middle QA Engineer

A Middle QA Engineer is a person who has both knowledge of software testing practices and several years of experience in the QA field. This professional understands the team processes, product architecture, product context, and why things are the way they are.

But what signals that a person is ready to move to the Middle QA Engineer Position? The following points are usually the background for the promotion:

• Solid skills that allow mentoring a new team member.
• Making suggestions on architecture and process improvement.
• Constructive comments during sprint plan discussions.
• Ability to identify average issues and successfully resolve them.

On average, a journey from Junior to Middle grade takes one to three years. That’s how much time a person may need to acquire all the necessary competencies.

Middle QA Engineer’s Responsibilities

If the requirements do not fully cover a particular scenario, the Middle QA Engineer will pay attention to this at the planning stage, long before an app starts to crash due to some non-standard user action.

What’s more important, the Middle QA Engineer is no longer afraid to work on tasks that last for a week or more. For example, they can break a large task into smaller units and delegate some tasks to Junior QA Engineers.

The Middle QA Engineer already knows that efficient software testing goes beyond an individual effort. This specialist has learned how to interact with other team members to increase the efficiency of the testing procedures. Therefore, Middle Quality Engineer responsibilities often include cross-functional communication. This person discusses controversial moments with a designer, reaches out to a Business Analyst to clarify incomplete requirements, analyzes an important technical solution with a Project Architect, etc.

Perhaps, at this stage, a QA specialist starts to think about moving towards automation testing services or into the management field.

Senior QA Engineer

A Senior QA Engineer is a person who aims to take a management position in QA. As a rule, at this level, a person is just one step before becoming a Team Lead (manages a testing team) or a Tech Lead (focuses on technical aspects).

The Senior QA Engineer still needs to learn new things. But unlike the Junior and Middle specialists, they don’t have specific guidance on what to study. It is more about strengthening professional skills and following industry trends.

Senior QA Engineer’s Responsibilities

The Senior QA Engineer spends less time on general testing tasks. Now, their area of responsibility is better defined and more narrow.

A Senior QA Engineer gets to be in charge of a certain product, a business service, or a project team. By this point, a specialist should be able to understand any product well to know what set of testing activities to use and how to delegate tasks. Also, the Senior specialist communicates with different teams and has an influence on the company level.

A distinctive thing about the Senior QA Engineer is a series of successfully launched products. Another one is the accuracy of estimations. Thanks to the experience in solving various problems, the Senior QA Engineer can choose an optimal solution and implement it. Whether they work independently or with a team, the Senior’s time estimates will always be accurate.

The time it takes to grow from a Middle to a Senior QA Engineer can vary. Someone reaches a new threshold in a year, while the others may need five to ten years. Some don’t advance to this stage at all, choosing a different direction or feeling totally comfortable with where they are.

QA Lead

A QA Lead is the final stage on the career ladder in the testing world. At this point, there are only other areas of activity a person can discover if they don’t plan to stop the career growth.

QA lead responsibilities include a lot of management-related tasks. Also, they have to be a specialist in the field. It is essential since a QA Lead becomes a decision-making figure in the hiring process. So besides working on strategies and delegating tasks, a QA Lead is the one to keep an eye on the emotional tone and comfortable environment for all team members.

To Sum Up

In this article, we aimed to explain what grades quality assurance & testing companies commonly use. Still, it is not a universal practice, and the approach to grades can vary depending on the company’s policy. That’s why analogical positions posted by different companies may feature varying QA engineer job descriptions.

A QA specialist’s grade determines the area of responsibility and salary. Still, there are companies that refuse to use grades. The main argument against gradation is the difficulty to distinguish between a Middle QA Engineer from a Senior or a Junior from a Middle. In this case, the responsibilities and salary depend solely on the person’s skills.

Keep in mind that the amount of years you’ve spent working in the QA sphere isn’t the defining factor. The truth is, if a person has worked as a QA Engineer for five years, it doesn’t make them a valuable addition to the team by default.

Professionalism depends greatly on the context. A variety of projects, a list of achievements, and team size altogether can tell more than a number of years spent working. Therefore, don’t get fixated on formalities. Instead, invest in developing your skills and keep looking for new opportunities.