Looking for a top quality control engineer? Discover essential skills, from analytical thinking to automation expertise. Ensure software quality and perfect product delivery.
But beyond testing experience and knowledge, what skills do these experts need to have to ensure your project meets your standards and requirements? Here are 10 of the most important ones.
1. Communication
QA engineers are tasked with identifying issues and collaborating with developers to resolve them. This means they must be able to clearly present and document problems, explaining them so team members understand what they need to do to fix them.
They must also be able to communicate with non-technical professionals, such as the project owner, to keep the project moving forward.
2. Curiosity
This work encompasses much more than just detecting bugs. Testers also evaluate aspects of the product such as user experience and performance. To do this competently, a quality control engineer must have the curiosity to delve deeper into a system and evaluate different product characteristics. They will also ask questions and clarify requirements as well as customer expectations.
3. Critical Thinking
QA engineers need to think beyond the obvious to find bugs and detect problems. This requires them to think critically about scenarios and test cases, often experimenting to find those that best fit the product in question. They also need to employ different mindsets to determine how various test cases will work and how users might respond to different product features.
4. Discipline
Testing is rigorous and meticulous work. Quality control professionals need to be able to exercise discipline, working quickly and carefully on their tasks. Being disciplined means being organized and efficient in executing projects, so that everything is done quickly and productively.
5. Accuracy
These professionals have quality in their titles for a reason. Accuracy is essential to the role. While it is impossible to completely guarantee the absence of bugs in a product, a quality control engineer must be able to thoroughly examine the software to detect as many defects as humanly possible. Automation can help, but experts themselves must produce accurate results.
6. Flexibility
Testing approaches will change and vary depending on the specific project and product you want to create. QA engineers need to have the flexibility and willingness to experiment with different software testing methods. Even when testers start with one plan, they may need to change at any time to accommodate new features and plans. Furthermore, they need to constantly monitor changes and new technologies in the area.
7. Empathy
To evaluate user experience, testers must be able to put themselves in users' shoes. They must be able to consider what users will respond to and what might affect the quality of their experience with the software. This requires empathy from the tester – they must empathize with the consumer’s needs to fully test the usability of the product.
8. Coding
While it's not essential for a QA tester to be a master engineer (that's why developer and tester roles are separate), it can be helpful to understand the basics of common languages. This will help with many tasks such as automated test scripts. It will also allow QA engineers and software developers to communicate about the product more productively.
9. Time management
Software development requires a quick turnaround to increase product time to market. This means that each team member must work quickly and diligently at the same time. Quality control testers have a particularly demanding job: they must evaluate the product thoroughly without falling behind schedule. This requires improved time management skills.
10. Analytics
Strong analytical skills are absolutely fundamental to the quality control engineer role. They need to be able to analyze all aspects of a product and system, identifying potential weaknesses that could impact the overall quality and user response to it. The engineer must also be able to identify the product's strengths so that the development team can capitalize on them.
Bonus round!
We are not ready! Here are three more skills you might want to keep in mind:
11. Collaboration
No matter the method used, collaboration is an integral facet of the software development process. The QA engineer works closely with each member of the development team to build a functional, high-performance, and easy-to-use product. These professionals must work side by side, listening to the advice and expertise of their colleagues. This is especially true if your team follows Agile and DevOps approaches. These methodologies are created around the idea of collaboration — which makes it central to the development cycle.
12. Attention to detail
Quality control engineers must have impeccable attention to detail. As we've discussed, it's impossible to guarantee the absence of bugs, but testers need to be able to catch as many as possible. They need to be able to see any minute defect that could derail the entire product and ultimately affect their business.
13. Experience
QA testers must be well-versed in different testing methodologies and know when to use each of them. They must also know when different types of testing are needed, as well as when to automate or perform tasks manually. This often requires practical experience that comes from practice. Although talented newbies can learn quickly, most of the time, experienced testers are preferred.
Working side by side as separate teams, testers and developers create a quality product that will meet and exceed your expectations. Want to know what we can do for you? Contact us today to find out how we can integrate with your own development team or work independently to bring your project to fruition.
