Career path
QA Engineer
A QA engineer makes sure software does what it should before users find out it doesn't. The role spans careful manual testing and writing automated checks, and it's one of the more accessible ways into the tech industry for detail-oriented people.
What the job actually is
You find problems before customers do, and build the safety net that catches them automatically. That means designing test cases, exploring a feature for the ways it might break, and increasingly writing automated tests that run on every change. Good QA is a mindset as much as a skill set — a healthy scepticism that asks "but what if the user does this?"
Skills that matter
- Methodical thinking — designing tests that cover the cases that matter.
- Attention to detail — noticing the small thing that's subtly wrong.
- Test automation — a scripting language plus tools like Selenium, Cypress, or Playwright.
- Clear bug reporting — a reproducible report saves everyone hours.
- Basic understanding of how the software is built.
How to switch in
QA is a well-trodden entry route into tech. Many start in customer support or manual testing and grow into automation. If you're detail-oriented and patient, you can begin with manual testing while learning to code, then move toward automated testing — a path that often leads on to software engineering or SRE.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know how to code to start in QA?
Not always. Manual and exploratory testing roles can be a starting point with little or no coding. But learning automation — and a scripting language to support it — is what lets a QA career grow, so it's worth picking up early.