Junior QA Engineer job description

Quality engineering — Junior QA Engineer
Runs scripted and exploratory tests and logs defects under guidance.

REQUIRED SKILLS
Test Analysis
- Exploratory Test Charters — You can run a scripted exploratory session against a charter someone else wrote, and note what you tried and what you found.
- Risk-Based Test Prioritisation — You can follow a stated test order and explain, when asked, why the riskiest case on the list is being run first.
- Requirements and Acceptance Criteria Analysis — You can review acceptance criteria for a piece of work and flag missing edge cases or ambiguous wording before development starts.
- Boundary and Equivalence Test Design — You can run test cases someone else designed using equivalence classes and boundaries, and explain in your own words why each case is there.

Automation
- Automation Framework Design — You can add a test to an existing automation framework following the patterns already there, with a reviewer checking your work.
- API Test Automation — You can run an existing API automated test and read its result, and adjust a request payload for a case someone else designed.
- UI Test Automation — You can run an existing UI automated test and read a failure screenshot or trace to say roughly where it broke.
- Regression Suite Maintenance — You can update a failing regression test once someone shows you which product change broke it. You keep the suite green on the work you were given, and you ask before deleting a test you do not understand.
- Test Code Review — You can review a small test change and spot a missing assertion or a test that would pass whatever the code did. You raise what you notice and leave the merge call to a more experienced reviewer.

Test Engineering
- CI Test Pipeline Integration — You can trigger an existing pipeline run and read its pass or fail result, and know where to find the logs when it fails.
- Test Data Management — You can create test data for a simple scenario yourself, and mask or avoid using real customer data while doing it, with some support.
- Test Environment Provisioning — You can bring up a test environment from an existing script or runbook and tell whether it came up healthy. You ask for help when a dependent service will not start rather than testing around it.
- Flaky Test Diagnosis — You can tell that a test is flaky rather than genuinely failing, and collect the run history and logs that show it. You report it instead of re-running until it passes.
- Test Reporting and Metrics — You can produce the standard test run report and state plainly what passed, what failed and what never ran. You ask what a number means before you put it in front of someone.

Specialist Testing
- Load and Performance Test Design — You can run an existing load test script against a target environment and read its summary report.
- Accessibility Conformance Testing — You can run an automated accessibility scan on a page and explain what one of its findings means.
- Security Testing Fundamentals — You can run a provided security checklist against a feature, such as trying an obviously invalid input, and report what happens.
- API Contract Testing — You can write a contract test against an agreed API schema and run it when the service changes. You ask which fields a consumer actually depends on rather than asserting on the whole payload.
- Cross-Browser and Device Testing — You can run a test pass on the browsers and devices you are handed and record what looked or behaved differently. You capture the version and screen size alongside the defect so it can be reproduced.

Quality Leadership
- Release Readiness Assessment — You can gather what a release decision needs — test results, open defects, what went untested — and present it without spin. You say plainly which areas you did not have time to cover.
- Quality Coaching and Enablement — You can show a colleague how a test or a tool works once you have used it yourself. You answer questions about your own tests clearly and say when something sits outside what you know.
- Quality Gate Definition — You can apply the quality gates already defined for a pipeline and say why a build was stopped. You escalate a gate that looks wrong instead of skipping past it.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can follow a plan someone else wrote, keep your own tasks up to date, and flag a task you own as soon as you know it will slip.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate a task you have been given once the approach is clear, and you say promptly when the estimate turns out to be wrong.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can own a piece of work after release: you watch how it behaves, fix what you broke, and are never chased for a status update.
- Quality Focus — You can choose checks that suit the work in front of you, catch your own mistakes before review, and confirm the result behaves once it is live.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can diagnose problems in work you did not build, and you fix the underlying cause instead of routing around the symptom.
- Domain Expertise — You can apply the basics of your field to the work you are given, and you know who to consult at the edge of what you know.
- Continuous Learning — You can pick up an unfamiliar area fast enough to be useful in it, and you turn what you learned into something others can reuse.

Communication
- Communication — You can explain your work to your team so they can act on it, and you take vague requirements and ask the questions that sharpen them.
- Collaboration — You can work well with people in other roles, share context and credit, and take criticism of your work without defending territory.
- Technical Writing — You can document your own work well enough for a colleague to follow it unaided, and you keep that document current as the work changes.
- Stakeholder Management — You can keep your manager and immediate team informed of your progress, and you raise an issue before someone else discovers it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can act on direction well, seek feedback on how you work, and be transparent about what you need help with.
- Mentoring — You can share what you have just learned with your peers and help a newer colleague find their way around.
- Strategic Thinking — You can explain why the work you were given matters and who it is for.