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4 Must-Have Skills a Competent QA Engineer Should Possess

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4 Must-Have Skills a Competent QA Engineer Should Possess - Blog

For those looking to work in the field of QA and testing, it’s important to get the quality assurance skills and competencies required to become a first-class QA professional. QA engineers, in particular, require a combination of soft and hard skills that can help them work better alongside software developers. Here are some of those desirable qualities that every QA engineer should possess.

Broad Understanding of the Product

To test a product efficiently, a QA engineer needs to know it well enough to know how it should function normally. This skill may sound obvious, but a lot of QA engineers struggle with testing because they barely know the product and its capabilities. This skill is often taken for granted, especially if the QA engineer’s only goal is to just get it over with. This is the wrong mindset when testing products. You need to study the product thoroughly before you can perform accurate and impartial testing for it. The more you know the product, the better you’re able to test it and all its functions.

Proficiency in Bug Tracking, Ticketing, and Tests

A QA engineer needs to have a solid understanding of testing tools, opening and tracking tickets, and direct knowledge of a company’s QA process. The less time it takes for a company to train you, the more likely they are to hire you or promote you. This means you can already work independently and fulfill the functions of a QA engineer with little to no supervision. They also need to have a ‘customer-focused’ vision where they know exactly what the customer needs and how they think when using the product.

Avoiding QA Ping Pong

This is an industry term used by many QA professionals when the same ticket is being juggled between QA and developers several times. Such a situation can happen due to a number of reasons. Either the developer doesn’t want to admit their mistake and rejects the QA findings without verifying it, or the QA marks a ticket as failed as soon as the first bug occurs. Those two scenarios are very likely to happen, especially if both developers and QA engineers can’t get past their egos.

A good QA engineer will check whether any failed issues are affecting further use cases or not. This lessens the need for the unnecessary back and forth between developer and QA. If the fail issue doesn’t affect other use cases, then you can proceed so you can discover more bugs as early as possible.

Development Knowledge

Quality assurance requires knowledge about software development as well. While they don’t perform tasks as developers do, having knowledge of how the development process is done is a huge advantage, especially when testing software applications. Development capabilities also happen to be required to eventually code automated tests. If you want to make your job a little easier, you can create tools that could aid you in running an automated test. Also, knowing how to develop gives you an edge since you know what “dangerous” code is that requires focus when testing. 

Conclusion

QA engineers basically understand what users need and help programmers build what is necessary for the product to become successful and easy to use. If you want to start a career in quality assurance, you better possess these skills in order for you to fulfill your role effectively.

Codoid is considered one of the top QA companies in the world today. With our team of QA experts passionate about software testing, we deliver a level of service that our competitors try to emulate but fail to do so. If you want to experience our QA services, partner with us today!

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