4 ways to get remote QA job

Will artificial intelligence replace qa testers?

BTW, it sucks to work on the beach: too hot and humid 😉

Remote jobs are attractive:

– you don’t have to spend time, money and nerves for commute to the office
– you have a better work/life balance
– you can live in a cheap country, but get salary from the expensive country.
– you don’t have to meet many people you don’t want to meet.

What not to love?

But how easy is it to get remote QA job? Well, here are the main options:

1. Go with uTest

uTest has become a social network for testers and at the same time a platform that connects testers and employers.

Here is what to do:

a. Register at uTest
b. Start participating in projects.
c. Work hard, smart, build your professional reputation.

If you do it right, you’ll get so many gigs that it’ll feel like a full time job.

Some uTesters get paid more than 100K dollars a year. Not so bad.

2. Go offline before going online

Some employers don’t like working with remote consultants/employees. At the same time, if person who works in the office has a great reputation and excellent performance, he can negotiate working remotely full time or certain days of week.

3. Have some exceptional/valuable skills/experience

If person possesses exceptional/valuable skills/experience, employers try to get him onboard offline or online, – doesn’t matter.

4. And there are, of course, standard, time-tested options, like finding remote work on career sites like Indeed or using your personal or professional connections.

IMHO, uTest is the most accessible and meritocracy based option than any other – especially if you are a novice tester.

But in any case, remember the principle: If you want to get entry-level QA job, you should explore ALL the options. Online/offline/high salary/low salary/long commute/short commute – the main purpose is to get on board ASAP and start getting actual QA experience.

Learn manual QA first, get hired, learn QA automation

Smart path to QA automation.

Learn manual QA first, get hired, learn QA automation

Question: I want to do QA automation, but I have zero QA experience


Here is what I recommend:

  1. Learn manual testing first
  2. Get hired
  3. ONCE you are hired, learn QA automation

Beginner QA testers should concentrate on ONE task: GETTING HIRED.

Find a job first. Once you are employed, there will be a lot of opportunities within the company and, if you want, one way or another you’ll learn QA automation BEING PAID for that.

Manual QA testers are hired without experience for Junior positions.

QA automators are hired only with experience, because it doesn’t make sense to do otherwise. See my relevant post.

Question about QA automation that I receive every day

Learn manual QA first, then move to QA automation.

Learn manual QA first, then move to QA automation. NOT another way around.

Question: Do I need to learn QA automation to get my first QA job?


Let’s think like a hiring manager and compare requirements for manual QA and QA automator.

Manual QA should:

  1. Know how to test software
  2. Know how to file bugs
  3. Be familiar with software development process
  4. Ideally have a good domain knowledge, e.g., how credit cards are processed or how video conversion works

QA automator should:

  1. Have all skills of Manual QA
  2. Have strong programming experience (for example, with Java)
  3. Have strong experience with particular QA automation framework (for example, with Selenium WebDriver)

If I’m hiring Jr. QA for manual black box testing, I care about two things:

  1. Personality
  2. Practical understanding of QA methodology and software development process

QA experience and domain knowledge are always a plus, but if it’s a good person to work with and he understand QA, then in my book it’s enough to be hired.

It’s completely different situation in case of hiring QA automation engineer.

I’ve been doing QA automation for more than 10 years and I know exactly that:

It takes years of programming and QA automation experience before person can not only write clean usable code, but also know WHAT to automate and WHAT NOT to automate.

In most cases, unexperienced QA automator will cause a MESS simply because proper programming and proper QA automation takes MANY years to master.

That’s why I ONLY hire QA automators if they have years of relevant experience.

“But what if I want to do QA automation?” The answer is here.

Will manual testers be replaced by AI? (spoiler: Yes)

Will artificial intelligence replace qa testers?

Will artificial intelligence replace qa testers?

There is good news and there is bad news.

Let me start with bad news: AI (Artificial Intelligence) WILL replace software testers.

Let me continue with good news – the process (of replacement) will probably take a while and we’ll become jobless right before AI takes over humanity – the point when we are basically so screwed that it doesn’t matter if we are employed or not.

Let me elaborate.

The power of a manual tester is that he is a human with all CURRENT human advantages over the machine. For example,

  • we have creativity
  • we have drive for innovation
  • we have natural curiosity
  • we have unique abilities to learn new skills
  • we have intuitive/aesthetic FEEL about how things should work/look like

Those profound advantages is the reason why QA automation (at this point) cannot explore/learn/approach/test things the way we, humans, can.

For example, as a human:

  • you can test without specification
  • you can realize that checkout flow is confusing to users
  • you can feel that UI color combination is wrong

At this point, QA automation simply repeats what you program it to do, e.g., create new account or do a checkout. In other words, QA automation has NO intellect. That’s why current usage of QA automation is so limited and it’s so fragile – basically it breaks any time when it encounters any kind of unexpected obstacle, e.g., when programmer changes textfield id.

Complete replacement of manual testers will only happen when AI exceeds those unique qualities of human intellect and it’s allowed to apply those qualities in real life.

How soon will it happen? Nobody knows, but AI is still far away from being creative, innovative, proactive, curious, etc., – from being human-like.

Before AI takes over humanity, we, software testers, will still be needed and maybe even have some great times while constantly improving AI helps us be more productive and have more fun at work.

So, let’s enjoy it while we can and before it’s all over.