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How to hire a QA Engineer

QA engineers plan how to test software, write automated tests, and hunt for ways it can break. They are the last line of defense before code reaches your users. In IT services and product companies, QA is one of the most common engineering hires. The role varies a lot, from manual testing to full automation engineering.

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What does QA stand for?

QA stands for Quality Assurance.

A QA Engineer finds out how software will fail before customers do. They write test cases from the requirements. They do exploratory testing where the requirements say nothing. They build automated regression tests that run on every change. They test performance, security, and accessibility where those matter. They report bugs clearly enough that someone else can reproduce and fix them. QA stands for quality assurance. The best QA engineers work as hard on preventing bugs as on finding them. They do this by questioning unclear requirements early.

Also called
Test Engineer, SDET, Automation Engineer, Quality Engineer
Function
Software quality and testing
Level
Junior to senior individual contributor
Reports to
QA Lead, Engineering Manager, or Head of Quality
Next step
Senior QA or SDET, QA Lead, Release Management, or development

The hiring challenge

Manual QA and QA automation are very different jobs. Job descriptions often mix them up. A candidate who is great at exploratory testing may have no automation skills. A strong automation engineer may miss obvious usability problems because they only test what is scripted. Start by being clear about which type you need. Then test for the right skills. Test design: can they spot the edge cases that matter? Automation depth: for automation roles, can they write test code that is easy to maintain? Prioritizing by risk: when time is short, do they know what to test first?

What to look for in a QA Engineer

Four traits matter. Thinking like an attacker: do they look for ways the software could fail? Or do they only check the happy path? Test strategy design: can they decide what to automate, what to test by hand, and what to skip based on risk? Clear communication: can they write a bug report an engineer can act on without five follow-up questions? Working with developers: do they get involved early, or only show up after the code is written?

Also check for experience with your testing tools, such as Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, or Appium for mobile. Check for comfort with agile ways of working, since many QA teams are still moving away from waterfall. And look for willingness to learn new tools. Testing tools change quickly. A QA engineer who only knows one tool will fall behind.

Common mistakes when hiring QA Engineers

Hiring manual testers for an automation role. If you need someone to write and maintain automated tests, test their coding skills. A manual tester who "wants to learn automation" will need training first. They cannot start on day one.

Not testing for edge-case thinking. Give the candidate a simple feature. Ask them to list every way it could break. Strong QA engineers will find problems you had not thought of. Weak ones will list only the obvious cases.

Ignoring communication skills. A QA engineer who finds bugs but cannot describe them clearly wastes the development team's time. Ask them about a bug they reported. How did they make it easy for the developer to fix?

Key skills for a QA Engineer

  • Test strategy and planning
  • Automation frameworks (Selenium, Playwright, Cypress)
  • API testing
  • Edge-case and adversarial thinking
  • Bug reporting and communication
  • Risk-based test prioritization
  • Debugging flaky tests
  • Collaboration with development teams

What a great interview looks like

Coding

"Write end-to-end tests for a login flow. Cover 3 edge cases."

Scenario

"The regression suite takes 4 hours. Leadership wants it down to 30 minutes. What would you cut first, and why?"

Voice

"Tell me about a bug you caught that nobody else had noticed. How did you find it?"

Scenario

"A new feature goes live tomorrow and you have only 2 hours to test it. How do you decide what to test?"

Voice

"How do you decide what to automate and what to test by hand?"

You can use these questions in Goodfit as they are, or edit the questions and the scoring for your team.

Recommended interview process

  1. 1

    Round 1: AI Voice Interview15 to 20 min

    The candidate explains their test strategy, lists edge cases, and shows how they communicate.

  2. 2

    Round 2: Technical Assessment45 min

    For automation roles, write tests for a real feature. For manual roles, do an exploratory testing exercise and write bug reports.

  3. 3

    Round 3: Engineering Manager Interview30 min

    How they work with others, how they prioritize by risk, and team fit.

In Goodfit, the AI interview runs the first round for every applicant. Skill tests, coding tests and roleplays can run in Goodfit too. Your team reads the scorecards and joins for the later conversations.

FAQ

QA Engineer hiring questions

What is the difference between QA and QC?
Quality assurance (QA) focuses on the process and on preventing problems. It makes sure the way work is done leads to good results. That means clear requirements, set standards, and the right checks built into the workflow. Quality control (QC) focuses on the product and on finding problems. It inspects the output for defects. Most software roles called QA do both. The mix depends on how early the engineer gets involved. Joining at the requirements stage, instead of at release, is the real difference in practice.
What is the difference between manual and automation testing?
Manual testing is a person using the software. Nothing replaces it for exploratory work, usability, or judging whether a behavior makes sense. Automation is code that runs checks over and over at low cost. It pays off on regression, which means checking that what worked last week still works. The mistake is treating them as rivals. They work together. You cannot automate exploratory testing. And re-running a regression suite by hand every release is a waste of time.
What is the test pyramid?
It is a rule of thumb about how many of each test to write. Put many fast unit tests at the base. Put fewer integration tests in the middle. Put a small number of end-to-end tests at the top. The reason is cost and reliability. End-to-end tests are slow, break easily, and cost a lot to maintain. A suite built mostly from them soon becomes one nobody trusts. Teams that flip the pyramid often end up turning off failing tests. That is worse than never writing them.
What skills does a QA engineer need?
They need test design. That means turning a requirement into useful test cases, including boundaries and paths nobody wrote down. They need real curiosity about how things break. They need at least one automation framework and enough coding to maintain it, beyond just recording tests. They need API testing, since much behavior is easier to check below the interface. They need SQL to check what the data really did. They need to write bug reports so clear an engineer can reproduce them without a conversation. And they need the confidence to push back on a requirement that cannot be tested as written.
What is an SDET and how is it different from a QA engineer?
SDET stands for software development engineer in test. An SDET's main output is code. They build test frameworks, harnesses, and tools more than they run test plans. The difference is how deep the engineering goes. It is not about seniority or judgment. A strong manual QA engineer with great test design can find bugs an SDET's automation never will. The best teams have both.
Is QA a good career, and is automation replacing it?
Automation has replaced repetitive manual regression. It has not replaced testing. The skills that matter more now are the ones automation cannot do. That means deciding what is worth testing, exploratory work, and judging whether behavior is acceptable. QA has clear career paths. People move to senior QA or SDET, QA lead, or release or quality management. Others move into development, product, or support engineering. The roles at risk are the ones that only run someone else's test script by hand.
What interview questions should I ask a QA engineer?
Give them something ordinary to test, like a login form, a file upload, or a search box. Ask for test cases. Score how wide the range is, more than the count. Look for boundaries, concurrency, permissions, network failure, and unusual input. Show them a vague requirement and ask what they would clarify before testing. Ask about a bug that reached production on their watch and what they changed. Ask how they decide what to automate and what never to automate. Then describe a fault and ask them to write the bug report.
How do you screen QA candidates at volume?
Resumes here are tool lists, and the tools matter least. Screen on test design directly. Use a short structured exercise that asks for test cases on a familiar feature. Score it on how much ground they cover and how well they spot edge cases. It sorts candidates in minutes and works for large applicant pools. Follow up with a conversation about a bug they missed. It tells you more than any list of frameworks.

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