The easiest entry point into IT, at this time, is the profession of a software tester.

Software testing is the research and checking of applications, sites, games, programs for compliance with customer requirements and finding errors (so-called bugs) in them. With the purpose of further correction of such bugs by the programmers and improvement of the program quality.

What is a tester
A software tester is a person trained in certain testing approaches who gets hold of new versions of software. He puts himself in the user’s shoes and starts playing the game, using the application, or examining the site for bugs and inconsistencies.

The tester analyzes, runs scripted tests, and figures out where else bugs can be found.

If he finds such errors (and he is bound to find them, that is his job) he writes a special report about it, according to which the programmers eliminate the errors.

A higher responsibility zone of a QA engineer – he analyzes the project as a whole, he knows how to provide the quality of the product at the stage of its creation. He is able to foresee the reasons of bugs and set up the process so that they do not occur.

Gradation of the tester position
All testers should know the basics and be able to test manually. Writing documentation, test scenarios, generating ideas about where and how to find bugs, how to improve quality, communicating with the team – these are all good foundations on which to build a whole career ladder.

The career of the tester, as well as any other specialist in IT, starts from the Junior position ($450-770). At this stage the tester does not have much practical experience, he is assigned to the simplest tasks, on which he gets a good hand.

If you get into the company, learn, do all the tasks, you will not sit at the entry level for long.

Developing further in the company, you move to the Middle QA level. You will already have more experience, you will do your work better and faster. Growth from Junior to Middle ($ 1000 – $ 1900) you can take from 6 months to 1.5 years, provided that you express yourself, offer improvements and actively participate in the project.

Next, after working for 1-3 years, you can become Senior ($2,100-3,200). In this position you can implement any technical task in the field of testing on the project. But small tasks are usually delegated to the Junior specialists. And you can spend more time on analytics and more creative tasks. The average salary for this position is $2500 per month.

Then there is the Team Leader ($2,500 – $4,100) – this is the head of the department. They become Team Leader after the Senior position, but it happens that people who have past experience with the leadership and management can become a team leader and in the Middle position. And, of course, Team Leaders earn more than Senior. It takes three to five years to reach this position.

If you have a taste for programming, you can become a tester-automate and start writing scripts that do a lot of routine testing themselves. The demand for automators is high right now, so the salary can increase by one and a half to two times.

I would also like to share an interesting, in-demand and financially profitable direction of Security testing – web application security testing. This is all about leaks of sensitive information, databases, theft and other vulnerabilities related to software. Companies are not at all ready to fight off hackers, but they are willing to pay generously to the tester for the security and quality of the product. In our practice, there was such a situation that the company paid $22,000 for 1 bug found.

There is also a very interesting position – the game tester. He uses the fundamental concepts of testing, principles and techniques, but only for testing games.

At the same time, testers can easily switch from gaming companies to non-gaming software companies and come back.

Testers also easily switch from testing sites to testing mobile applications, desktop versions, and different kinds of software in general.

Unlike a programmer, a tester can choose any projects built on fundamentally different technologies and programming languages. And switch between them. This versatility gives testers a huge choice of jobs in all areas.