Quality Assurance (QA) specialist is an inevitable part of every successful web project. An experienced quality assurance engineer knows all the aspects of the business and programming features of the product, which allows aligning interests of clients, developers, and owners. Such a person has the most suitable position to influence all the aspects of the product and fix it before customers get a negative experience. Orange Sputnik knows all the hidden aspects of software businesses and will help to find the most suitable QA engineers for your needs via the Staff Augmentation approach.
QA engineers hiring:
What they do, Why needed, and Where to find?
- What is QA specialist doing?
Experienced QA provides a complicated approach to testing IT products, which defines weak sides both on the programming and principle sides. - Why is QA needed for software businesses?
QA specialists facilitate the fixing of the developing product before customers have found bugs and mistakes, which improves customer loyalty. - Where to find the most suitable engineer?
Ukraine possesses a wide range of QA developers, starting with entry-level specialists with small salaries (about $500/month) and ending with experienced testers ($2000/month and higher), while Orange Sputnik provides fast hiring process and all working organization remotely.
Located in Ukraine
Being located in Ukraine and having 5+ years of experience in staff augmentation, Orange Sputnik creates the most suitable conditions to hire developers for startups and IT businesses from abroad.
Why QA is needed for the remote development team?
Those who opened all the benefits of remote dedicated teams should understand that the QA manager is some kind of additional control over the outstaffing team. The business owner can be not familiar with code specifics, so the person with understanding both the programming side and the whole idea of the project can be an intermediary. Moreover, such an engineer is responsible for the quality of the product and will fix the issues if needed.
Another specific point to be mentioned is the psychological side. Thus, a developer cannot adequately test his product, evaluate the quality of the code or approaches used, even having and using advanced tools for it. In this case, a remote senior QA engineer will explain all the specific points and issues to the concrete developer personally and provide an appropriate working process with fixing problematic aspects.
How to define if QA Engineer is needed for Your Startup?
- The visible perspective of the product. It would be advisable if you set long-lasting goals and expect the development of IT products, possibly with the switch of the main orientation or its expansion, at least. However, If the business has too narrow specialization without visible opportunity for growth, code developers can provide testing and quality control themselves.
- Big or expanding team. If you have more than two developers of the same product, they cannot provide a fair evaluation of their code, while the objective specialist can. If the team began to expand, adding an extra control point will also be a wise decision.
- Negative customer feedback. If the product appeared on the market and received negative feedback, it is time to think about previous quality checks. Usually, a simple switch of responsibilities from one programmer to another is not an effective decision, and the person from aside has to come and provide a new evaluation of the quality.
- Possibilities, perfectionism. Even if the software code is written and developed by yourself, one more person with onlooking will ask additional questions at least and surely improve the overall quality. Rarely used, but no one denies the perfectionism of the owner, especially if there are opportunities for additional checks.
As it comes from the name, the QA specialist assures the product’s quality in the full range of this meaning. Moreover, such an engineer is the only person that can influence the IT product both on the codding level and influence its initial purpose. Professionals in this sphere should have many skills, that may be presented as in the chart below:
Effective software QA has to know every aspect of the product, including the technical side, UI/UX, and the initial idea of the owner. Furthermore, such a person has to effectively communicate with all the participants of the process to minimize spendings. As one can see, that is not only testing of the programming part and defining gaps or bugs, QA has to turn a piece of rock into a gem.
- Clarification of the requirements to the product with the owner or business analysts;
- Planning of the testing process;
- Writing test cases (test scripts);
- Functional testing of the code;
- Identification of the problem areas, their inclusion in the tracking system;
- Discussion of bugs and fixes with developers;
- Tracking the life cycle of errors;
- Re-test of fixed defects and re-evaluation;
- Analysis of the testing process;
- Optimization and improvements of the testing process;
- Analysis of teamwork and defining steps that led to bugs;
- Meeting with developers and process improvement;
- Preparing and maintenance of test documentation.
Two primary types of tests can be applied to the software product: automated and manual. Depending on the specifics of the product and type of the needed check, a business owner can choose the most appropriate variant. Let’s look at both of them:
- Automated testing presupposes the creation of the specific script that will check not only the code for possible errors but their possible appearance after long-lasting work and data accumulation. Such a method is especially useful for huge projects or when the developer makes frequent changes to the code.
- Manual testing is mostly focused on checking the usability of the web product. This approach is similar to interaction with the product as it will look for the customers, but experienced QA knows weak sides and can define cornerstone reasons for the possible problems.
A business owner that wants to check the product has to understand the differences between the core concepts that relate to the quality. Quality assurance is not the same as quality control, and both of them differ from testing of the web product:
- Tester. Tester provides the work on the lowest level and makes only basic check that is related only to the specific code on the concrete stage, but not to the product in general. The results are described and noted, re-check can be made if needed.
- Quality Control. Responsibilities of the quality control specialist include testing of the product’s code, but also expand to checking the general structure of the software. Thus, such a person can influence the work of both front-end and back-end developers to prepare a similar logic on the programming level. It helps to avoid further inconveniences if software developers are replaced or added to the team.
- Quality Assurance. That is the most challenging task as it includes duties of previous specialists, while such a specialist also has to understand the general concept. An experienced QA can forecast future changes of the idea, back-end, and front-end with defining the structure or programming instruments for solving possible tasks. In other words, that is a professional advisor to the whole product who understands all the weak sides and can organize the work in the right direction from the beginning.
The process of finding the best candidate for an IT job can be simplified to several steps and criterions that should be adhered:
- Best quality / price ratio
- Appropriate cooperation opportunities
- Personal preferences
According to Payscale.com, the average annual salary of QA engineer is about $69,000, starting with $51k and ending with $95 (average number that can be measured due to several propositions). Those numbers are rather typical to the IT sector in general, where the wage distribution depending on the experience also looks logically.
Chances to find an appropriate candidate to the needed position are huge as all the three criterions seem to be satisfied. But what about remote variants?
As Staff Augmentation provides reliable cooperation of software developers on all the possible levels, one has to look at East Europe as a possible source of a cheaper workforce. The growing Ukrainian IT market offers interesting variants to build a remote dedicated team without additional distracting issues for startup and business owners.
According to Jobs.ua (Ukrainian job search site) and 88 work propositions, one can find the QA specialist starting with only $3,400 annual salary, while the seniors are available for $16,800/year. Knowing that the quality of specialists is comparable to the European, business owners can muchly reduce overall spending and increase the quality/price ratio.
*Note, the states numbers do not include fees and other legal expenses!
What relates to other items that influence the decision, Orange Sputnik provides practical cooperation even for the remote working process. Moreover, the almost absent time gap, appropriate level of English, and similar mental values of Ukrainian QA engineers eliminate possible boundaries for effective software development.
Orange Sputnik is always open to suggest the best Dedicated Software Developers for your business. The vast talent pool of Remote Developers and our 10+ years experience ensure the best match precisely for your needs.
Today Orange Sputnik operates offices in Sofia and Utrecht.
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