When people ask what I do, and I respond with, “I’m a QA tester”, or “I’m a QA Engineer” they have no idea what that means, or they think I do call monitoring. If I try to elaborate and tell them I test software, or even give examples, they get glassy eyed, nod, mumble something about that being nice, and change the subject.

So, what is a QA Engineer? What do they do?

It’s often said that QA Engineers are glorified babysitters. Babysitting code, double and triple checking it. Depending on who you work with, and where, that can be what it feels like, but it’s also so much more.

QA Engineers work in engineering, and own the quality of the product. It sounds daunting, and honestly, depending on your team and how involved you are in the process, it can be. As QA you should be involved from start to finish; from the planning stages of a feature to its release to production.

By being involved from the beginning you’re able to ask questions, learn about the product, and point out areas of concern, or what you’ll need for testing. You test each part to make sure it meets the criteria and standards outlined before it gets to production.

Your job is to test, and to do it well. You want to find any bugs, or poor user experiences before the end user. You want to be a champion of quality, and help educate and encourage your whole team to view quality in a high regard. But yeah, you babysit code, watching to see if it acts out, does things it shouldn’t, throws a tantrum (errors), etc.