If you are from the IT world, you must be aware that the quality of the product is what is valued in the market. Your product fabricates the brand image of the organization in the market. A well-designed product can bring more potential customers than your applied marketing techniques; in short, a product can market itself if it’s worthy. This blog on Quality Analyst helps you to understand in detail what a quality analyst does? What are his roles and responsibilities? and many more.
QA stands for Quality Assurance, the process of testing that ensures that the customer is given high-quality software products or services free of bugs and glitches. The primary role of the quality assurance process is to focus on improving the software development process and making it efficient and effective. The PDCA cycle defines the quality assurance process, and the PDCA stands for Plan, Do, Check and Act.
- Introduction
- Who is a QA Analyst?
- Job description
- Roles and responsibilities
- QA Analyst salary trends in India and the US
- Skills required to become a QA Analyst
- A day in the life of a QA Analyst
- How to become a QA Analyst?
- What are the advantages of a QA analyst course?
- To summarise
Introduction
The term QA analyst refers to quality assurance analysts. QA analysts have to test the quality of the product to ensure whether the quality is meeting the standards as per requirements or not. They are responsible for testing the quality of a product. However, it is the most needed job in the IT sector, where product quality matters more than the product itself. Quality assurance analysts are the people whose job is to test the software product to cater to the individual and business needs of the organisation. Those looking to create a career in this field should have a keen interest in technology and software development. In this article, we are going to discuss the job of QAs completely- their roles & responsibilities, their skills, and much more. Become a QA Analyst today!
Plan: The organization at the start plans and establishes the process-related objective and creates a blueprint of the process required to deliver a high-quality product.
DO: It stands for the development and testing of the process and makes changes if required.
Check: It stands for monitoring the process, modifying it, and checking whether it will help meet the outcome.
Act: A quality assurance tester implements all those necessary actions to improve the process.
Everyone in the software industry is using Quality Assurance to make sure they stand on the customer expectations and requirements then be its tech giants like Amazon, Google, or startups like Swiggy, OLA, etc.
Who is a QA Analyst?
A QA analyst is a person who has good knowledge of programming languages, software development tools, software testing tools, and troubleshooting. QA analysts test the software produced by the use of different software testing tools to check if they meet the required quality or not. QA analysts are not specific to software development only, but they are also required in the field of website development, any product or item development. Every product or software needs to be tested before it gets deployed in the market or delivered to the client to ensure quality standards. QA analysts are the specialists who assess the software product’s functionality and look for any errors and issues. QA Analysts are responsible for the testing phase of the production of any software product to ensure that the final product meets the quality standards.
Job description
In this section, we will look at an example of a job description that employers use to attract new employees for the role of QA analyst:
Quality Assurance analysts are also called test analysts. They are required to test the software application for quality assurance and bugs. QA analysts use test plans to inspect the software application’s code and make it error-free. The primary purpose of a QA analyst is to test the software for both functionalities and technically, which are the most important aspects of a quality product. They report the errors found to the developer’s team and coordinate step-by-step with the team for the complete delivery of the quality product. They should possess strong problem-solving skills and programming skills. QA Analysts should have sound knowledge of quality standards to provide the required quality of the product. QA analysts’ responsibilities include identifying software problems and the errors in that product. They have to use various testing tools for testing the product.
Roles and responsibilities
QA analysts play a vital role in an organisation. As we know, an organisation’s success depends on the success of the product or services that they provide. And QA analysts are responsible for testing and reporting the quality of the product to ensure it meets the desired quality standards. QA analyst professionals are required to do multiple roles for an organisation. They can also be a part of a software development team, manufacturing unit of the organisation, and customer dealing. QA analysts are proficient in software development and testing the quality of the products. The responsibilities that QA analysts have to do are as follows:-
- QA analysts are responsible for testing the software product’s quality.
- Their responsibility includes designing and implementing testing plans for the products.
- Finding bugs in any software product and removing them.
- Creating reports related to the quality of the product and what changes are needed to be done to achieve the desired quality.
- QA analysts are required to identify the procedures for the quality control of the products.
- Monitor product reviews promptly and regularly inform the development teams if any changes are needed in the product.
QA Analyst salary trends in India and the US
Any job’s value can be determined by the salary and the demand in the market. However, QA analyst is a professional role and plays an important part in the success of any product. In this section, we will compare the average salaries of QA Analysts in India and the US-based on multiple factors such as the Company itself, the experience of the analyst, and the skills that the analyst possesses. The average salary of a QA analyst in India is 386,219 Rs./year, while in the US, it is $58,320 /year.
Salary: Based on company
In this section, we will look further into the average salary of QA analysts based in India and the US.
Average Salary of QA analyst in India:
- Amazon.com Inc.: Rs. 435,852 /year
- Concentrix Corporation: Rs. 375,656 /year
- Teleperformance: Rs. 275,844/year
- Accenture: Rs. 380,000 /year
- Tata Consultancy Services Limited: Rs. 454,910 /year
- Thoughtworks, Inc.: Rs. 900,00 /year
- Intelenet Global Services: Rs. 276,000 /year
- Wipro: Rs. 401,000 /year
- Cognizant: Rs. 486,000 /year
- HCL Technologies Ltd.: Rs. 370,000 /year
- Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp: Rs. 460,000 /year
- Deloitte: Rs. 575,000 /year
Average Salary of QA analyst in the US:
- Northrop Grumman Corporation: $79,274/year
- UnitedHealth Group: $50,980/year
- Aetna, Inc.: $38,620/year
- Wellcare Health Plans, Inc.: $66,000/year
- Ferguson Enterprises, Inc.: $40,445/year
Salary: Based on experience
In this section, we will look at the average salary of a QA analyst based on the experience level of the analyst in India and the US. There are four levels of experience in this role: entry-level, early career, mid-career, and experienced.
Average Salary of QA analyst in India:
- Entry-Level: Rs. 272,193/year
- Early Career: Rs. 357,119/year
- Mid-Career: Rs. 490,679/year
- Experienced: Rs. 505,194/year
The average salary of QA analyst in the US:
- Entry-Level: $51,220/year
- Early Career: $55,791/year
- Mid-Career: $61,131/year
- Experienced: $65,168/year
- Late-Career: $67,632/year
Salary: Based on skills
- The more skills a QA analyst has, the more salary hike he will get in his career. Therefore, skills are an essential part of determining the salary. Here we will see the average salary of QA Analysts based on Skills in India and the US.
Average salary based on skills in India:
Quality Improvement/QA: Rs. 512,140/year
Data Analysis: Rs. 491,425/year
Quality Assurance/Quality Control: Rs. 544,961/year
Microsoft Excel: Rs. 589,581/year
Regression Testing: Rs. 1,012,346/year
Average Salary based on skills in the US:
Quality Improvement/QA: $72,293/year
Data Analysis: $65,000/year
Quality Assurance/Quality Control: $64,573/year
Microsoft Excel: $63,671/year
Microsoft Office: $74,558/year
Skills required to become a QA Analyst
QA Analysts must possess both technical and analytical skills. Apart from these, they should have the following skills:
- Knowledge of using software testing tools
- Excellent programming skills are a must
- QA analysts should be good in mathematics, and analytics
- They are required to have strong technical skills
- QA analysts should be good problem solvers
- Report making skills
- Strong communication and writing skills
- QA analysts should have a creative mindset
- Good SQL query skills
- QA analysts must have project management skills
A day in the life of a QA Analyst
QA Analysts assess the product for quality control and report it to the developer. The daily tasks of a QA Analyst include testing the product, continuously checking reviews of developed products, creating reports, making software error/bugs free, and designing and planning the testing of software which are in the developing process. The common work that a QA analyst does daily is to run the software code to see if any errors/bugs exist or if the code is working fine. If any problems or errors are found while testing the product, his job is to immediately report that error to the development team through the document. He must do the same task repeatedly until the final product is of the desired quality and the error-free product is achieved.
How to become a QA Analyst?
Now, you have a pretty knowledgeable idea about what a QA does or the roles and responsibilities they have to play in an organisation. So, if you think that it is a field of your interest, then you can start your journey by completing your Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. But doing Bachelor’s may not be enough for you to become a QA analyst. You have to work hard for a QA’s skills, such as testing skills, coding skills, debugging skills, and report generating skills. We have already discussed the necessary skills to become a QA Analyst in this article before.
After completing a bachelor’s degree in computer science, you can choose between two options. You can further or do internships to get practical experience in this field. It also depends on what salary or position you expect as a QA analyst in an organisation. If you expect a really good salary and position, you may have to do a Master’s degree in computer science because some employers hire according to their educational qualifications. Otherwise, you can start doing internships in organisations and gain practical knowledge to help you get a job.
The last step that you can do to become a successful QA analyst is to complete certification programs in this field, such as QA testing. Completing certification will benefit you more, maximising your chances of getting hired in a well-reputed organisation. Various platforms provide certifications in QA or QA testing. You can find a relevant program for yourself and begin your journey of becoming a QA analyst.
What are the advantages of a QA analyst course?
Completing a QA analyst course has more advantages if you want to succeed in your career. You can derive the following benefits from doing a QA analyst course:
- Job opportunities: After doing the QA Analyst course, you will have multiple job opportunities related to this field, such as Software tester, Software developer, Business analyst and more. You can choose any of the roles associated with QA that fits best for you according to your skills and your interest.
- In-demand career: There is a high demand for QA analysts in several companies for assessing the organisation’s product. You can get a job easily if you fulfil all the requirements of a QA Analyst.
- High salary package: The salary of a QA analyst or any other role depends on multiple factors, such as the level of experience and skills. But the pay is high in this job. The more experience you get, the more salary hike you will achieve. So, it’s an excellent opportunity to do a QA analyst course if you expect a job with a high salary package.
- Secure Job: As we already discussed in this blog, the company’s success depends on the quality of the product they deliver, and the quality of the product is checked or tested by the QA analyst. So it is a highly needed job, and almost every company wants a QA analyst who can improve the quality of the product by assessing it. And no organisation wants to get failure in their product and services. So, it will be a secure job for a QA analyst.
Who is a Senior QA Analyst?
A senior QA analyst is the most senior member of the quality assurance team. They focus on total quality management and analyze requirements and design documents. Their daily routine is to review the codes and facilitate the quality assurance process.
The duty of the senior quality assurance analyst also includes:
- Debugging and managing the existing bugs.
- Effectively logging new bugs.
- Producing defect.
- Status.
- Test reports as required.
They are the ones who raise product-related issues to the team timely, establish metrics and best practices, recommend review processes and methods, and communicate with the development team and the client.
Educational Qualification and experience as a Senior QA analyst
1. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information technology, management information, or any equivalent domain. 2. An experience of 4-6 years in the software testing domain. 3. An experience of 3 years as a quality analyst.
4. A comprehensive knowledge of concepts, methodologies, and tools is required as a QA analyst.
5. A proven skill in quality assurance applications, databases, and MS office.
6. An in-depth knowledge of programming languages like Python, Java, SQL, HTML, JavaScript, and Scrum.
7. Certifications like Quality Engineer, Quality Improvement Associate, Quality auditor, etc., can act as a plus in your resume.
Skills required as a Senior QA analyst
Bundles of skill sets fitting to the job profile can help you grab a decent job. In the 21st century, the market has changed, and so has the industry; employers are now looking for candidates who can give them the best possible result in a short interval of time with their advanced skills set.
Mentioned below are a few of the essential skills that you should have as a Senior QA analyst:
● Experience in performing automation testing.
● In-depth knowledge of programming languages such as JavaScript, Java, Python, HTML, SQL.
● Some special software and technical skills.
● Critical Thinking: An ability to resolve the issues irrespective of the situation. The primary role of the QA analyst is to fix the bugs and fix the bug; you need the ability to dig out the issues and fix them as early as possible.
● Learning Skills: To have an astonishing career, it’s essential to have a learning mindset. The learning ability helps you as an individual to grow your skills, and it helps you in possessing an ample knowledge of tools and technologies that are getting upgraded every day. The command can help you solve the problems efficiently, helping the organization touch new heights.
● Team Player: An individual can win a fight, but a team can win a war. It’s essential to be a team player as that helps get the work done before time and with minimum effort. A quality assurance analyst must coordinate with various
teams such as the programming team, development team, executives, and testers to ensure a successful product release.
● Flexible working approach: Being flexible is the new normal. The quality assurance analyst should be ready to take on any added responsibilities to accomplish the product’s successful launch. The flexibility is about being prepared to work from any location, for a longer duration, etc., as per the requirements.
● Attention to detail: To accomplish the tasks in a given time frame, giving attention to every minute detail is essential. Your inattention can offer a hindrance to the supply chain, and an organization can’t afford that. It’s critical to be attentive during working hours.
● Communication skills: This is one of the most vital soft skills. As a senior quality assurance analyst, having practical communication skills can help you communicate effectively with juniors, clients, team members, managers, and stakeholders.
A quality assurance analyst should be efficient informal as well as informal communication. Conversational communication skills help you deal and communicate with the team members, developers, etc. In contrast, formal communication enables you to deal with clients, managers, and stakeholders.
If you work on improving all these skills, then no doubt that you are moving forward to have an astonishing professional career as a Senior QA Analyst.
Roles and Responsibilities
As a senior quality assurance analyst, the organization will have huge expectations from you. They will be looking forward to assigning you some key roles depending upon the year of your experience. Mentioned below are some major roles and responsibilities that you can expect as a senior QA analyst:
● As a senior QA analyst, you will be focusing on designing plans to ensure the quality requirement adheres to the organization’s policies.
● After getting the bugs and glitches fixed, you will be responsible for implementing programs.
● You will ensure the projects chosen to bring out the result.
● To analyze the root cause of a defect, you will be collecting the essential statistics and then analysing it in a better way to find the cause.
● You will be expected to share your knowledge with the Junior quality assurance analysts.
● You will be the one delivering efficient solutions to the various types of issues.
● You will be reviewing the data flow across various systems and performing database queries to validate test data.
● Using comprehensive knowledge of agile software development cycle and web mobile-based application testing.
● Developing and maintaining the test strategies, regression plans, cross-feature plans, and tests encompassing manual and automation.
● Working closely to control and monitor testing efforts looking for coverage gaps and looking forward to improving the quality and efficiency.
Senior QA Analyst salary trends in USA and India
The software industry’s future looks promising, and so does the senior QA analyst salary. The technology boom is creating vacancies in different tech giants and startups. Be it USA or India; the startup culture is growing exponentially. Every startup is collaborating their idea with technology to survive in the market, which generates the need for a quality assurance analyst in the team.
| Job | Average Salary in USA |
| Senior QA analyst | $100,000 |
| Quality leader | $1,07,786 |
| Job | Average Salary in India |
| Senior QA analyst | ₹ 900000 |
| Quality leader | ₹ 900000 |
| Company | Average Salary |
| Wells Fergo | ₹ 8,78,009 |
| Oracle | ₹ 12,53,282 |
| Cybage Software | ₹ 14,19,569 |
| Ascena | ₹ 16,20,991 |
| Thoughtworks | ₹ 16,87,111 |
| Thomson Reuters | ₹ 11,48,047 |
A day in the life of a Senior QA analyst
● The day of a Senior QA analyst starts on the breakfast table with breakfast, coffee, and mailbox.
● Reverting to the critical emails, the person heads to the office.
● A team meeting takes place where the tasks that will be accomplished in the day are discussed.
● The work will vary depending on the software and where it is in the development cycle.
● Before lunch, the analyst tests the codes and looks for the bugs, and in the latter half, he discusses the problem with the team and looks for an effective solution.
● The office hour ends with the team meeting, submitting the reports.
● Back home and grab the meal!
How to become a Senior QA analyst?
If you want to become a QA analyst, you should answer ‘Why do you want to become senior QA analyst’? Once you find the answer now it’s all about education, hard work, and determination. In terms of educational qualification, according to a survey, it was found that 66.7% of senior quality assurance analysts have a bachelors degree and 21.5 % of senior quality assurance analysts have a master’s degree.
With the skill mentioned above sets, you need a few years of working experience too to join an organization as a senior quality assurance analyst.
What are the advantages of the Senior QA Analyst Course?
Courses are always designed to make your journey easier. They give a roadmap of what you should study and what skills you should add to your resume to land in a reputed organization. The specific courses designed at Great Learning give you knowledge from essential to advanced levels.
Once you complete the course, you will feel much more confident and will be able to present yourself in a well-structured manner in front of employers. You will give them a reason to hire you.
Conclusion
There’s numerous scope in the software industry and working as a Senior Quality Assurance Analyst is one of them. Choosing the right career is one of the most important decisions that a person makes in his life. According to the industrial experts, to grow as a Senior Quality Assurance analyst, you need to have a critical mindset to analyse the problem and solve it as soon as possible. In the current scenario, you should work on upgrading your skills to overcome complex challenges. There are several industry designed certifications in which you can enrol yourself to learn new skills and upgrade the older ones.
To summarise
- Who is a QA analyst?
QA analyst is the one who tests the quality of the product, finds errors/bugs in the product and reports them to the development team for debugging. Their job is to check whether the product meets the required quality standards or not.
- How do I apply for a QA Analyst course?
You can apply for a course of QA analyst from several platforms. It is important to search for one that checks all the boxes for you in terms of your expectations from the course.
- Is it good to choose an interest, your QA analyst, as a career?
It depends on your interest in the field. If you think that a QA analyst’s job is right for you, then you should go ahead with it as a career. The other good points of choosing a QA Analyst as your career is its high demand, high salary, and work role.
- What are the skills required to become a QA analyst?
The skills required to become a successful QA Analyst could be summed up as:
- Problem-solving skills
- Software Developing skills
- Programming skills
- Strong Communication and Writing skills
- Mathematical and Analytical Skills
- Project Management skills
- Report generating skills
- How do I become a QA analyst?
To become a QA Analyst, you can follow the following steps:
- Complete your bachelor’s degree in computer science.
- Start doing internships to get practical experience.
- Complete your Master’s degree in the relevant field of computer science.
- Gain experience by doing the Writing job.
- Get additional certifications of a Software tester, QA tester, etc.
QA analysts play a very important role in an organisation’s success as they test the quality of the product that the company deals with. And the quality of the product determines the company’s success. QA Analysts design, test, and debug the software product to meet the quality control before delivering it to the customer/client or the organisation.
Quality assurance can be a career choice for you. The only thing that matters is your interest and if you have an interest in testing the products and checking for quality, then you can start your career in this field. It could be the right choice for you! Think about it.
