As per title: How is a Quality Engineer different from a Test Engineer?
What do you see the differences are?
Does it depend on company, industry, country?
Weāre discussing this as part of Exploring Quality Engineering, we appreciate any input and perspectives you may have and hope to quote good ones! 
In many ways, it isnāt. It is simply anther title, for the same role.
In the same way as QA Engineer, and many other titles, often fail to differentiate a role or job that you actually do. Who you are, and team/company you are in, makes a bigger difference in many cases then the title of the job.
With the following major exceptions:
If weāre just talking about job titles, then it definitely depends on company, industry, country, etc. Iāve seen all kinds of titles that usually donāt mean much.
If weāre talking about what a person actually does or aims to do, in short: a Test Engineer focuses more on uncovering information; a Quality Engineer will often do this too, but then theyāll do more with that information. Are we just assessing something, or are we trying to improve it? A good example from BBST is a company / department that evaluates software products before deciding whether to buy them. Here, weāre not at the stage of trying to influence quality at all. We just want to assess it.
Thatās just my take on the two terms; how I think about them when deciding how to describe myself and the work I do. Iām totally okay with other people using the terms in different ways to describe themselves.
Iām in the role of quality engineer.
I was expected to build an automation framework for UI checks, API automation,
review and add Performance scripts, create tools to generate test data, create programs that can be used as PoC, manage environments and some configurations, technically support the BA team for client data and systems integrations, do product quality checks, technical investigations and fixes outside product code. Every couple of months I get a new technical challenge to help others or improve quality of processes, product, tools, client interaction.
Iāve never been that bothered by job titles, but sometimes the job title can be the start of educating organisations about the scope of your role.
In my current role I was recruited as a āTest Leadā 6 years ago and it was clear the perception was āyou test stuffā. True, we did but no-one saw us in the early days as an input to a product realisation. So I felt we needed to educate the business and redefine the role.
So the most important word to change was āQualityā. Its an input, its an ongoing principle and its an output. Quality Engineers can consult at any stage, prevent quality issues and of course test along the way.
Just changing the job titles isnāt enough obviously, you have to be bold enough to own influencing quality decisions. None of this ābut its not in my job specā, you do what you need to, you turn up where you need to and define what a Quality Engineer is yourself.
The difference between a software tester and a quality tester lies in the focus of their work. A software tester primarily ensures that the software functions correctly. This can involve conducting manual or automated tests, following predefined scripts, referencing requirements documents, performing exploratory testing without scripts, and using various other methods.
A quality tester, while capable of performing all these tasks, places a stronger emphasis on maintaining and improving the overall quality of the system. Their role often incorporates quality control mechanisms and focuses on enhancing the systemās qualityāa key aspect for achieving standards like ISO certification. Specifically, a quality tester:
For sure it is āperceptionā from others. (and role definition of course).
Although my team are are āQA Engineersā, the Dev Manager still refers to them as ātestersā 
I continually point out that Developers are capable of testing their own work, through verification of Acceptance Criteria and Unit tests etcā¦
The āQAā will also do this and more with regards to the āopen viewā as opposed to the closed view that the Dev concentrates on. Overall ensuring Quality is maintained by way of other factors - Validation & Verification, Usability, cross-browser/cross-device, securityā¦ the list goes onā¦
Although āQualityā is everyoneās responsibility, there are many levels that have to be considered - this is a while subject in itself.
Quality Engineer:
Broad focus on the entire SDLC to ensure quality.
Involves strategic responsibilities like implementing quality processes, standards, and tools.
Test Engineer:
Narrower focus, typically on testing and verification of a specific product or feature.
Primary responsibility is to identify defects through manual or automated testing.
Those things werent invented back in the 90ās when I started testing. Back again in ātestingā after a couple of decades in managerial roles I find myself ticking off both boxes. I just make everyone happyā¦
Iām not sure I understand what the job title meansā¦
One question is āWhat do we mean by Engineer?ā Is this someone with specific qualifications, a membership of a professional engineering body that monitors standards of behaviour, practice, ethics, continuous professional development? Can someone be struck off for malpractice? etcā¦ Is this an āengineerā where the job title tells the customer/collegues they can expect a standard of knowledge, capability, behaviourā¦? That question applies to test, quality and indeed software engineering job titlesā¦ If not, what is meant by engineer?
And the second question is about scope (test v quality) - I have roles in testing and roles in quality. When a Quality Manager my role has been typically across the entire organization looking at overall improvements, preventative methods to reduce failure, risk reduction and mitigation, coaching and training, analysing data to help decison making around risks, as well as strategies for assessment methods including reviews, testing, inspectionā¦ I wonder if the quality engineer role is like the quality manager roles I had?
Orā¦ are we defining the roles quite differently?
I would have thought that a difference could be that a quality engineer would view faults as being caused by the system not the individual, and so works to improve quality by improving the system. However, I have known Test Engineers who view have this view and work to improve quality by improving the system.
that fits with the Quality Manager roleā¦
I agree that the system is managements responsibility. However, testers contribute to the companyās organisational learning so they can contribute to improving the system.
Yes, of course - it is just that I think the new QE might be actually the same as the old QM roleā¦ or the old quality analyst role from the 1980ās which was about process improvement? But I also think there are overlapsā¦
That is interesting. Please expand on the old QM role
QM: system/organisation wide, looking at process and product, helping to improveā¦ company wideā¦ remit to coach and support Subject Matter Experts on quality and help them improve their areas of responsiblityā¦
The detail>
I will now dive into the olden days, in case it is usefulā¦ So when I was a quality manager, first, in the 1980ās there was a set of concepts and activities:
QM - quality management - which was made up of 3 areas:
A Quality Manager looked after the whole lot, to make sure systemically and across the organization the appropriate infrastructure was in place to support good process and good products.
A QA person (Quality Analyst) reported to the QM - and did all the measurement and support around process/how we do things.
QC (Quality Control) was done as part of other roles (eg all the devs did unit testing) and also as specialist roles - testers, artefact inspectors.
career progression: I started as a tester (therefore in QC dept) became a test manager (of a QC team), moved in being a QA (suggesting and helping to implement improvements to testing process, approaches, methods, etc, whoever was doing it) and from there became a Quality Manager delivering company wide improvements to all process for all teams for all activitiesā¦ That included helping /coaching all the Subject Matter Experts to understand what would be useful to improve in their areas of responsibility, agree among themselves, and support getting that in place. Also what not to improve, what to leave aloneā¦ What to measure, what not to measure. Focused on what the Board needed and also what the people in the teams needed. Lovely role - really busy, very useful.
Thank you. That is really interesting. I do wonder if there is across over between what you describe and QE
THIS!!! Say it again for the people at the back!
Generally I donāt think my role would be different regardless of my title, but how other people see me is changed. As a Quality Engineer, itās assumed that Iāll have more to say on things like code quality, unit testing, architecture and all that good stuff!
A Quality Engineer focuses on best engineering and development practices, aligning them with business success and ensuring product quality through effective team processes and dev processes, tech decisions. Their role is driving systemic improvements across the product lifecycle.
A Test Engineer focuses on technical excellence ensuring quality through effective testing processes and approaches. Their focus is more technical, identifying and addressing specific issues in the product through testing approaches.
But these are more like my theoretical definitions, usually companies donāt have such 2 different roles with well defined tasks and responsibilities and as usual it happens - there is just QA/Test Engineers and itās up to them to focus solely on testing or on the bigger picture (if they have resources but again, usually they donāt )
The role of Quality Engineer may often play a QA Lead or even a Dev Lead
The Institute of Mechanical Engineers makes an interesting distinction on its membership page (Become an IMechE Member, Affiliate, Associate, CEng, IEng, Engtech, Fellow - IMechE) where chartered engineers, incorporated engineers and engineering technicians have different roles, and different qualifications - when looking at test engineer and quality engineer can we find a similar distinction? Do we need both SQE and STE at all three levels? Also maybe worth looking at the SFIA levels? Levels of responsibility ā English and skills directory SFIA 9 skills directory AāZ ā English.