Are you full stack? Some people are a specialist or a master of one particular skill, but they can also have decent knowledge of multiple skills. Sometimes, others loathe or belittle such people because of their lack of mastery in just one area.
In software development space, companies may not agree with this. Let’s see how.
On LinkedIn, Indeed, or other job portals, you can see the term ‘Full Stack’ in the job description. Be it a full-stack developer or quality assurance engineer, today’s demand is that a single person should possess at least working knowledge of all the required skills and should not be a master of just one skill. Today’s hiring companies look for people who are ‘Jack of all trades’ and not a ‘master of just one trade’.
This article focuses on this job role in the testing process. You will learn what full-stack QA is, the advantages and disadvantages, and the scope.
Now, let’s start with a brief definition of a full-stack quality assurance engineer and need for such a role or position in the software development process.
Who is Full Stack QA?
This term is generally used from an application developer’s perspective e.g. A full-stack developer – someone who can do both front end and back end coding or someone who is knowledgeable of all the front end and back end technologies.
The same concept is applicable to Quality Assurance Engineers. It would describe an all-rounder who can perform various types or levels of testing such as manual testing, automation testing, security testing, performance testing, and so on.
Typical skills/responsibilities of a Full Stack QA Engineer
Following are some skills (but not limited to) required to be a full-stack QA engineer (these skills are some common skills collected from job requirements posted on major job portals such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor):
- Strong knowledge of Agile methodology, software QA methodologies, tools, and processes.
- Ability to write test scenarios and test cases for manual testing.
- Ability to write unit and integration tests.
- Understanding of testing frameworks.
- Writing automation test cases on tools like Selenium WebDriver.
- Experience in API automation such as Postman.
- Experience with Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery tool such as Jenkins.
- Experience in Bug tracking and reporting.
Advantages
- The benefit of continuous learning – in this job role, a person has a chance to learn multiple technologies or tools. As explained earlier, a full-stack QA engineer will be responsible for both manual and automation testing. If you look at the skills mentioned in the above section, you can understand what type of knowledge a full-stack QA engineer is required to have. For such a wide range of skills, you need to keep learning new skills available in the market at regular intervals and keep yourself updated.
- Good salary – Due to the multiple skills requirements from a single resource, companies will be ready to pay more money for a good candidate. Hence, full-stack QAs are better-paid specialist QA or Test Automation Engineers.
Disadvantages
- Too much pressure on one person to do everything – Full-stack QA engineer can enjoy multiple benefits working at such a significant position but at the same time, it comes with a great workload. Working in an agile team with the pressure of continuous learning along with the use of existing knowledge efficiently may create an extra layer of overstretching.
- If a certain tool is not in demand, it might take time to learn a similar new tool – As mentioned earlier, a full-stack QA engineer needs to be aware with the new market developments and keep himself ready to learn new tool or technology as early as possible to make the best use of the new method in the existing project. With the great workload coming with the position, it might get difficult for the person to manage everything on hand.
Scope for 2020
Based on the research done on some job portals, we can safely make the following conclusion in terms of demand for a full-stack QA engineer.
Worldwide, there is decent demand for full-stack QA engineers especially in continents like Europe and North America. Full-stack QA engineers also have good growth opportunities as Test Architects in the future because of their experience in almost all the parts of the software testing process.
Conclusion
For any individual interested in ‘software testing’ as a career, having expertise in all areas of testing will be beneficial not only for the candidate but also for the hiring company. This role can be seen as a very significant role in any organization and it will also help to boost career growth.
I hope this article was helpful for people who are looking for a change in their testing career and also for people who are planning to start their career in software testing.
