🧪 QUALITY ENGINEER - QA (M/F)

The QA (Quality Assurance)Engineer ensures the quality of software before and after it goes live. By 2026, the role had become predominantly technical: the focus is ontest automation and integrating quality throughout the entire development process.

🎯 Tasks

• Define the testing strategy: what to test, at what level, and with what level of automation.
• Develop and maintain automated test suites (UI, API, integration).
• Integrate testing into CI/CD to detect regressions with every release.
• Conduct exploratory testing on critical paths.
• Monitoring quality in production: tracking bugs, analyzing incidents.

🛠️ Skills & Tech Stack 2026

• UI Automation: Playwright (now the industry standard), Cypress.
• API Testing: Postman, REST Assured, contract-based testing.
• Programming Languages: TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, or Java, depending on the tech stack.
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, pipeline testing strategies.
• Performance & Accessibility: k6, JMeter, axe-core.
• AI tools applied to testing (test case generation, test case maintenance) are booming.

💰 2026 Salaries (as reported in France)

• Junior: 38–45 k€
• Confirmed: 45–58 k€
• Senior / Lead QA: 58–75 k€
• Freelance: Average daily rate of 400–650 €.

🔍 Not to be confused with

The traditional manual tester (a role in sharp decline): The modern QA engineer writes code, designs the test architecture, and works as a developer specializing in quality.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Should each team have a QA? The standard ratio is 1 QA for every 4 to 8 developers, with quality assurance responsibilities shared by the entire team.

Playwright or Cypress? Playwright has become the go-to choice for new projects (cross-browser compatibility, performance); Cypress remains widely used in existing projects.

📈 Trends

Lead QA, SDET, QA Manager, Head of Quality, Engineering Manager.