Levels and Titles, Decoded — Reading the QA Career Ladder
"QA Engineer" sounds like one job. It's hiding at least three. A manual tester, an automation engineer, and an SDET can all carry that title, at wildly different levels and salaries. Place the wrong one and everyone loses.This guide fixes that.Levels and Titles, Decoded teaches technical recruiters how to read the QA career ladder, tell the titles apart, and place candidates at the right level every time.What's inside:- The core QA titles decoded — Analyst, Engineer, SDET, QE Lead, and the rest- The two AI titles that look alike but mean different jobs — AI-Augmented Test Engineer vs. AI Test Engineer- QA Manager vs. QA Architect — the people track vs. the top of the technical track- How to read seniority from how a candidate describes their work- Why the same title means different things at different companies- How to match title, level, and comp so placements actually land- A Practice Session — real recruiter-to-candidate scripts for pinning down levelThis is Volume 7 of the QA Recruiter Guide Series, the final volume. If you're new to QA, start with the Technical Primer (Volume 1) first.Written by Jonathan Hofler, a Senior AI-Augmented Test Engineer with 10+ years in QA and the creator of QA Smith AI.
Get it → hoflerqa.gumroad.com