How to Hire QA Engineers Remotely?
Are you interested in learning how to hire QA engineers remotely?
The global market for quality assurance is expected to reach 14.01 US dollars in the year 2025. The increase in QA job roles indicates the growing dependence of businesses and startups on quality assurance to ensure the successful delivery of their software products.
In this article, we are going to discuss how you can hire QA engineers remotely for your software project. We will start by taking a look at why there is a need for QA resources in the software industry.
Why Hire QA Engineers?
A quality assurance engineer ensures that your development team deploys a final software product that meets all the functional requirements and industry standards.
They work closely with software developers to ensure that you build a bug-free software product. The responsibilities of a QA resource vary considerably.
They are an integral part of the development team in each stage of the software development life cycle, from outlining the requirement specifications all the way through to design and implementation.
The following points by the World Quality report highlight how the requirements for a QA professional are changing with the evolving software development landscape.
- Software testing today is more focused on end-user satisfaction. Software testers are required to think bigger than any particular functionality but at how users will respond to it.
- The majority of executive management personnel believe that the objectives of QA include a contribution to business growth and outcomes.
- With the agile and DevOps software development process, QA has become a part of software development teams rather than a separate testing team, as used to be the case.
- The top challenge in adopting a quality assurance approach is an implementation of a test environment and automation testing tools.
- Businesses are readily adopting AI techniques to ensure the quality of software products. 45% of businesses are using artificial intelligence(AI) for QA automation, and 59% are willing to adopt predictive analytics.
Next, let’s discuss what jobs a QA engineer performs. This will give you an idea of what to expect from your hired QA engineers.
Role and Responsibilities of a QA Engineer
The quality assurance engineers or software testers break down the software product into testing goals and convey any issues found back to the development team. QA professionals are often referred to as:
QA Analysts who focus more on the business logic of the software product. Their work includes the following:
- Finding bugs in the software working;
- Writing test cases;
- Testing user interfaces;
- Write automated test codes;
- Outline test plans and test strategy.
QA Engineer jobs are more specialized in improving the software system. In addition to the tasks done by QA analysts, a QA engineer can help your product development team by:
- Performing risk analysis;
- Developing standards and metrics to ensure product quality;
- Researching new tools and technologies for QA processes;
- Reviewing software product documentation, etc.
How to Hire QA Engineers Remotely?
Hiring any technical resource remotely can be a tough call, given the vast market of software developers and testers. Here are the main steps you need to know:
Gather your Software Project QA Requirements
Understand and outline your software quality assurance requirements. The SQA is involved in a lot of processes, including requirement engineering, code reviewing, software testing, source control management, release management, and software integration.
Analyze your development team to understand the skills and assistance you require for effective software quality assurance from your QA engineer.
Look for the Required Technical Skills in QA Engineers
As the QA role in software development today is much more than just writing test cases, there is a range of technical skills that QA engineers must have to add to the business value.
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Some of the technical skills and knowledge that QA engineers should have include:
Hard Skills
QA engineers should have the following hard skills:
Writing Test Cases
Test scripts help validate the quality of a software application. You should hire QA engineers who are able to write effective test scripts encompassing all use cases.
Your QA engineer will write test scripts for testing functionalities, user interface, and navigation of your software application.
To perform better functional testing, QA developers should be a part of your business analysts team to better understand your business goals.
They will also go through software documentation, like software requirement specifications, to better understand the functional requirements of each software component so that they can test it accordingly.
Proficiency in Programming languages
Your QA tester should be able to write quality testing code. Normally, programming languages like Java, Python, and Perl are used to write test cases.
Moreover, they should be familiar with basic web development technologies like Javascript, HTML, and XML.
The QA engineers should be proficient in writing test code for software modules that conform to the relevant code standards, which are easy to maintain and understandable by all team members.
Python is an object-oriented programming language that helps QA analysts and developers in multiple ways.
Python can be used with Selenium, an automated testing tool, to write and update test scripts according to your project requirements.
For example, your software QA engineer can use Python to write Selenium web driver scripts to validate the functionality of browsers.
Use of APIs
APIs are an integral part of software applications. Your QA engineer should be able to effectively test APIs for their responses to ensure your software product runs correctly and with a high degree of performance.
Postman is a commonly used API testing tool. It is an API client that helps software developers and QA engineers to create, test, and document APIs. They can efficiently create complex HTTP requests and validate their responses.
Your QA engineers can also use a selenium testing framework to automate API testing. Refer to this article for more help.
Cross-Browser Testing
Cross-browser testing ensures that your software application is running smoothly across different browsers like Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc., and on different operating systems like Android, Windows, Linux, iOS, etc.
This is an important non-functional test that your QA engineers must be skilled in.
Cross-browser testing helps QA engineers to validate multiple quality assurance aspects.
For example, it helps to identify underlying code issues, test web application responsiveness, monitor web page performance like loading times, detect UI design glitches, etc.
Some cross-browser testing tools that your QA engineers should know about include Lambda Test, Selenium, and Browserling.
LambdaTest is a cloud-based browser testing tool. It helps QA professionals with manual testing of web applications and running automated tests on two thousand plus browsers, device emulators, and operating systems.
It has an extensive range of features like parallel testing, API for continuous testing, tools to enable continuous integration, etc.
Selenium is another software QA testing tool that comes with multiple cross-browser testing components like Selenium Integrated Development Environment, Selenium Remote Control, Selenium Webdriver, and Selenium Grid.
Selenium Webdriver is used to perform automated web application testing. It supports multiple programming languages commonly used by a software tester like C#, Java, Python, Perl, etc.
It directly communicates with browsers and so is efficient as compared to Selenium Remote Control.
Selenium WebDriver helps with the testing of dynamic web elements that are considered difficult to handle when performing automated testing.
It uses functions like Absolute Xpath and Contains to locate dynamic elements on a web page, moreover, the Selenium testing suite is an open-source tool and comes with plugins that add to its portability and reusability.
Read more on Selenium’s features here.
Database Technologies
Data is essential when it comes to software applications. Database management systems are used by software developers for easy storage and manipulation of data.
As the database is the main component of a software product, your QA engineers should be able to work with it efficiently. They will be testing software components that one way or another affect the data.
Your QA engineer should be able to write database queries to validate the functionality of software components. They should be familiar with common database systems such as Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, etc.
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Agile, DevOps, and Continuous Delivery
Software development methodologies like Agile and practices like DevOps and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery involve efficient product development and market deployment.
Your quality assurance team should thoroughly understand these software development practices. They will be required to implement an automated testing environment to run functional and non-functional tests frequently.
To configure such an automated testing environment, your QA engineers should be familiar with tools like Jenkins and GitLab.
Read more on using Jenkins for the DevOps environment in our blog post that is dedicated to this topic.
Bug Tracking
Bug tracking also referred to as defect tracking, is an important task performed by QA engineers. In the bug-tracking process, your QA engineer will monitor and log errors encountered during the testing process.
These errors or bugs are then evaluated and prioritized for debugging. Large software systems can contain thousands of bugs to deal with. Your QA engineers should be familiar with defect-tracking tools to speed up the process.
Some commonly used QA tools for bug tracking are Backlog, Jira, and Bugzilla. Jira is commonly used in agile environments for bug tracking and project management.
Bugzilla is another open-source bug-tracking and test management tool that links easily with other project management tools, application lifecycle management tools, etc.
Version Control
Version control or source control involves tracking and managing changes made to the software code. Version control is not just for software developers. Your QA engineers should be familiar with it, too.
QA professionals use version control to configure and roll back test cases to the code version on which the team is currently working. It also helps them to maintain a log of how test cases evolve with the software code.
Your QA engineers should be familiar with the commonly used version control systems such as Git and Microsoft TFS, now known as the Azure DevOps Services.
These tools will help your QA engineers implement software testing practices like maintaining independent code branches, comparing different test code versions, and keeping track of code modifications, such as who made the changes and reverting changes to previous code versions, etc.
Security Practices
Software security testing has become an essential part of all today’s testing procedures. The latest technological advancements including the demand for interconnected systems and data sharing, have led to advanced cybersecurity threats.
Your quality assurance team should be familiar with the latest cybersecurity vulnerabilities to protect your software from them.
Security testing performed by QA engineers should cover all the typical security requirements of a software application.
These security requirements include confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, authorization, and non-repudiation.
Your QA engineer should be familiar with security testing tools like Zed Attack Proxy by OWASP, SQLMap, etc.
These tools help perform effective security testing through features like automatic scanning, multi-platform support, rest-based API, database support, etc.
These features help expose multiple security vulnerabilities like SQL injection, private IP disclosure, XSS injection, etc.
Emerging Technologies
The latest technologies, like Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and blockchain, are making software applications more complex. Advanced QA skills are required to test such complicated software solutions.
For example, blockchain technology is largely being adopted by businesses to build secure data solutions. According to research, global spending on blockchain solutions will reach almost 19 billion US dollars by 2024.
The blockchain transaction process includes validation, encryption, decryption, and transmission stages. One mistake in creating these properly can halt the whole development process.
Testing such software systems includes intricate procedures designed to prevent this.
Your QA engineers should be familiar with the working of such advanced technologies and tools that assist in developing and testing them.
For example, to test an AI-based software’s functionality, your QA engineer should be familiar with the underlying AI algorithm, i.e., supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, etc.
They should be able to handle the required datasets to test and validate the ML model being used.
Another aspect is using these emerging technologies to improve test processes. AI is largely being used for this purpose.
AI tools help a QA automation engineer efficiently automate different types of testing procedures, including security testing, performance testing, usability testing, etc.
This blog article discusses how artificial intelligence is improving quality control in detail.
Your QA engineers should be familiar with AI-based testing tools such as Testim, Applitools, etc., to implement automated testing procedures.
Read more about these AI testing tools here.
Soft Skills
Some soft skills to look for in QA engineers include:
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Communication Skills
Good oral and written communication skills are a must-have for quality assurance engineers. They work closely with software developers and product managers and should be able to explain software bugs to them in an effective manner.
Team Player
In software development environments, especially agile software development, small cross-functional teams are working on different software components.
QA engineers must perform software testing at each stage to ensure the features built during each sprint are of the required standards.
A QA resource should work as a team player, understanding the common objectives and helping other team members out throughout the whole development process.
Time Management Skills
Agile and DevOps encourage frequent delivery of software applications. This means frequent code reviewing and software testing.
Test engineers should be able to meet tight deadlines for product testing that often arise in fast-paced development environments.
Hiring Process for the Remote QA – Choose a better option
Now that you have gone through all the required technical skills, it is time to hire QA engineers. Hiring remote technical personnel has become quite common today, given the flexibility it adds to the hiring process.
Hiring managers or recruiters can select the required candidate from a vast pool of talent available worldwide. There is no need to compromise on skills as required when recruiting from a specific region.
According to the State of Engineering report, 86% of engineers are working remotely in North America. Every one out of three engineering resources wants to work 100% remotely.
The reasons include no need for commuting, better work-life balance, more autonomy, etc.
Given the popularity of remote working among employers and employees alike, and the advantages remote work brings to companies, you have made a sound decision to hire QA engineers remotely.
With hiring QA engineers, there are two options: hiring freelance QA engineers and outsourcing QA engineers from a software development company.
The freelance market, though huge, is a risky option. A freelance platform will just link you with the freelancer, and their work is done. Vetting a QA resource for its skills and credibility lies solely with you.
Moreover, freelancers are working on multiple projects simultaneously. There is a chance a freelance QA engineer not giving his/her full time and effort to your software testing project.
We advise you to opt for the second option of partnering with a dedicated hybrid software development company.
Experienced software development companies have a rich talent of software engineers, each expert in a specific software development niche like mobile app development, website development, QA testing, etc.
This option will add flexibility to your hiring process. You can outsource QA testers as and when needed according to your software project stage and requirements.
These software developers, designers, and testers are thoroughly assessed for their skills and trained to develop a high-quality software product.
You can rest assured that field expert talent is performing quality assurance procedures for your software.
Read more on building a remote development team in our blog here.
Final Thoughts
Software quality assurance is an essential part of delivering a successful software product to the user market.
As software applications are getting more complex with the advancement in digital technologies, their performance and security testing call for an exceptional QA team.
If you are still looking for expert QA engineers to test your software application, you can contact DevTeam.Space via this quick form.
One of our technical managers will reach out to you to further discuss your QA needs and link you with a suitable QA engineer for their top-quality software testing services.
Top 3 FAQs on Hire QA Engineers Remotely
QA engineers are accessed for their soft skills such as analytical thinking, communication skills, and technical skillset like black-box testing, integration testing, bug tracking, knowledge of software development and database management, etc.
The main goal of the QA role is to prevent faults in a software product. They take quality control measures to ensure that a software application runs as expected by the software developers and end-users.
A QA analyst may not necessarily have a technical background in the computer science field whereas a QA engineer has a strong background in software engineering. For example, in a financial business, a QA analyst can test software quality in terms of its functionality without core software engineering expertise.
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