QA Engineer Job Description
A complete QA engineer job description template, plus the ATS keywords hiring teams screen for and how manual testing differs from test automation roles.
"QA Engineer" covers more ground than almost any other title in engineering, from someone who works through a written test plan by hand to someone who designs and maintains the automated test framework the rest of engineering writes tests against. Those are different jobs with different pay bands, and the title alone won't tell you which one a posting means.
The clearest dividing line is whether the posting requires a programming language. A QA Engineer posting that lists a language requirement — Python, Java, JavaScript, whatever the codebase uses — is describing an engineering role: building and maintaining test automation, writing code that runs in CI, sometimes contributing fixes directly. A posting with no language requirement, built around executing test cases and filing bug reports, is describing manual or exploratory testing — real, valuable work, but a different job that the market increasingly pays less for as companies invest in automated coverage.
It's easy to undersell what good QA work actually requires. Designing a test that finds the bug a developer's own tests missed is a specific skill, not a lesser version of writing the feature — the two require thinking about the system in opposite directions. Candidates coming from a manual-testing background who want to move toward automation should expect the interview loop to test coding ability directly, often with less patience for "I can learn it" than a fresh graduate would get for the same gap.
Verrantine · Atlanta, GA
Full-time · On-site
$85,000 – $115,000
About the role
Verrantine is hiring a QA Engineer to join the Quality Engineering team, which owns test strategy and automated coverage for our core product. You'll work closely with the engineers building each feature, writing automated tests that run in CI alongside manual exploratory testing for the cases automation doesn't catch well.
This role is based in our Atlanta office. About two-thirds of the work is automation — extending and maintaining a Selenium and API test suite several thousand tests deep — with the rest split between manual testing of new features before release and triaging bugs reported from production.
What you'll do
- Design and write automated tests — UI, API, and integration — that run in our CI pipeline on every pull request.
- Perform manual and exploratory testing on new features before release, especially where automation isn't practical yet.
- Maintain and extend our existing test suite, and treat a flaky test as a defect to fix, not a check to skip.
- Write clear, reproducible bug reports that a developer can act on without asking you three follow-up questions.
- Participate in feature design discussions early enough to flag untestable requirements before they're built.
- Own test coverage for a subset of the product, including deciding what does and doesn't need automated coverage.
- Investigate production bugs to help isolate root cause before handing off to the engineering team.
- Contribute to test strategy — where automation belongs, where manual testing still earns its time, and why.
What we're looking for
- Three or more years in a QA or test engineering role, with real production-software experience.
- Working proficiency in at least one programming language — Python, Java or JavaScript — for writing test automation.
- Hands-on experience with a browser automation framework such as Selenium, Cypress or Playwright.
- Practical SQL: enough to query the data behind a bug rather than take someone else's word for what's in the database.
- Experience with API testing tools such as Postman, and enough HTTP fluency to read a failing request.
- The ability to write a bug report that stands on its own — clear repro steps, expected versus actual, no missing context.
- Comfort working from ambiguous or incomplete requirements without waiting for someone to fully specify the test plan.
Nice to have
- Experience with performance or load testing tools (JMeter, k6 or similar).
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines well enough to debug why your own test broke the build.
- Exposure to accessibility testing and the standards it's measured against.
- ISTQB certification or equivalent formal test-design training.
- Experience mentoring less experienced testers or reviewing their automated tests.
Benefits
- Medical, dental and vision coverage, with employee premiums covered in full.
- 401(k) with a 4% company match, vested immediately.
- On-site in our Atlanta office, with free parking and a fully stocked kitchen.
- $1,500 annual learning budget, usable on conferences, courses or certifications.
- Twenty days of paid time off plus company holidays.
Salary range
As posted for this sample role. Real pay varies by employer, location and experience.
$85,000–$115,000/ yr
ATS keywords for this role
The applicant tracking system (ATS) — the recruiting software a hiring team searches and filters applicants with — will screen for these. Weight shows how central each one is to this specific posting.
Required and central (4)
Important (7)
Mentioned in passing (7)
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a QA Engineer, a QA Analyst, and an SDET?
There's no industry-wide standard, but a rough pattern holds: QA Analyst and manual tester titles usually mean executing test plans and filing bugs without a coding requirement; QA Engineer sits in the middle and increasingly expects automation skill; SDET (software development engineer in test) is explicitly a software engineering role focused on building test infrastructure. Check the requirements list, not the title — companies apply these labels inconsistently.
Do I need to know how to code to work in QA?
For a growing share of QA Engineer postings, yes. Manual-testing-only roles still exist and are real jobs, but the market has been shifting toward automation, and postings that don't require a programming language increasingly pay less and carry more layoff risk when a team invests in automated coverage. If you're building a QA career, learning to write automated tests is the highest-leverage thing to add.
Is QA a good way to break into software engineering?
It's a real path, and plenty of engineers started there, but it isn't automatic. It works best when the role gives you actual exposure to writing code — building test automation, debugging CI failures — and when the company has a track record of QA engineers moving into development roles. Ask about that track record directly in the interview rather than assuming the path exists.
Does an ISTQB certification actually help?
Modestly. It's most useful as a signal for someone changing careers into QA with no other track record to point to — it shows you've studied test design formally. For someone with a couple of years of hands-on testing experience, a portfolio of the automation you've actually built will outweigh the certification most of the time.
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