A QA engineer (quality assurance engineer) is a specialist who monitors the quality of a product at all stages of its development. In addition to testing, the QA engineer is responsible for the introduction of new techniques, monitors the relevance of tools, introduces quality assessment metrics, thereby improving the product.

In this article, Vladislav Akimov, web QA engineer at the Kolesa Group, will talk about:

• the role of modern QA and what it takes to succeed in the profession;• the importance of soft skills on a par with hard skills;• Business thinking and user needs.

Previously, QA in Kazakhstan and the near abroad was expected mainly to perform test cases and bug reports. Today, the profession has evolved: the role of QA has increased. Functions of modern QA engineers:

– participation in the discussion of architecture;– analysis of business requirements;– a link between developers and analysts.

This means that a modern QA engineer should be a generalist. It makes the job more interesting. What is the versatility?:

1. The QA engineer is connected long before testing begins.

2. QA connects to the requirements analysis, reviews the design, draws up a test plan or checklists before the start of the development phase.

3. And it doesn't stop even after the code is in production. QA is a constant cycle of improvements at each stage.

Of course, hard skills are important. Knowledge of working tools is still necessary: Selenium, Playwright, JUnit, TestNG, Postman, Jira, etc. This is just the foundation, but not the whole "house".

During interviews, our hiring managers look not only at the technical skills of candidates. We are looking for people who are able to think systematically and see the big picture.

For example, if you write autotests, then it would probably be interesting to write workflow for CI for it yourself, and not give it to DevOps. It is super important to understand the structure of the project, all integrations and business logic in order to write the necessary autotests. We also appreciate if QA monitors its developments, examines the impact of its work on product performance. 

A modern QA engineer must understand how the whole system works. This means that you need to understand application architecture, databases, network protocols and be able to ask the right questions.

Example: The team is developing a mobile application. The QA engineer is not just testing functionality, but also trying to figure out:

– how is data transfer security ensured?

– what is the performance of the system at peak loads?

– how is the interaction between microservices organized?

– can the deployment of a connected microservice affect the operation of a mobile application?

This approach allows you to identify potential problems at an early stage and significantly improve the quality of the product.

Understanding business logic and the needs of end users is one of the most important skills of modern QA. 

Let's look at the role of QA using the example of the "Real Estate Valuation" feature in the Krisha application.kz from three different points of view: apartment owners, apartment buyers and the company. The owners will find out the objective cost of the apartment for sale. Buyers get an idea of market prices. For the company, this feature is valuable because it increases user confidence in the platform Krisha.kz .

The role of QA in all this is incredibly important. QA engineers balance the interests of the owners, customers and the company, ensuring that this function works correctly for everyone. In addition, QA is constantly improving the accuracy of the "Real Estate Valuation", taking into account user feedback.

This mindset allows QA engineers to create more relevant test cases and find not just bugs, but problems that are really important for the product.

A modern QA engineer is not just a "tester", but a full—fledged participant in the product development process. You must be able to communicate effectively with developers, designers, managers, and researchers.

Examples of situations where teamwork skills are important:

1. During sprint planning, you help the team assess the complexity of tasks based on your testing experience. Because the developer is responsible for the service, and QA is responsible for how it will interact with the entire system as a whole.

2. When "floating" defects are detected, you do not just create a ticket with a description, but discuss the problem with the developer, helping to quickly identify the root cause of the problem.

In the IT field, readiness for continuous learning becomes not an advantage, but a necessity. We learn something new every day. Whether it's a new automation tool, a testing methodology, or just an interesting approach to solving a problem. It keeps you in good shape and helps you stay in demand.

Every year we also hold the Kolesa Conf, a large—scale IT conference where we make presentations and share our experience with others. We also hold external meetings at the company's office in Almaty.

We have budgets for external training, we send our guys to conferences, and we conduct internal meetings ourselves, in which we share knowledge and new skills. For example, new approaches in data generation, event testing, and statistics collection. 

We are also engaged in self-education within the company. There is no point in studying everything. Therefore, we select training materials that can benefit the project. In order to be able to test the acquired knowledge in practice and put it into general operation.

At the Kolesa Group, we have prepared tips for novice QA specialists: https://recommend.kolesa.team/qa. There we have collected video tutorials, online courses, books and useful links.

Becoming a successful QA engineer today is more than just mastering a set of practices and technologies. It is the art of balancing technical knowledge, understanding of business processes, communication skills and constant self-development.

Yes, the path may seem difficult, but it is this complexity that makes the QA profession so exciting. Every day you solve non-standard tasks, learn something new and make a real contribution to the creation of high-quality products that will be used by millions of people. The impact of QA on the product is becoming more and more obvious and transparent.

So if you are ready for constant challenges, love to learn and want to be at the center of the process of creating innovative products — welcome to the world of QA. This trip is worth it.