Good afternoon, This is question for those of you who work (or who have worked) in larger testing teams where there is a tiered structure within the team.
Do you have “Senior testers” (or same in spirit, but perhaps by another name) in your team as a distinct role? If so then are the positions available for anyone who meets the criteria (whatever these might be), or do you have limited numbers/ an approximate ratio of seniors in the team?
If you don’t have Senior tester as a job title, then what do you have in place for people to work towards in terms of job and career progression (and ultimately options for salary increases etc.) which isn’t necessarily “leadership” roles (either project or team)
Hello, I work for a rather large company, so we have an HR function dedicated to job architecture, salary levels, career paths and (not just for testing) role design that allows for team members to build a career. We have no ratios for senior testers vs less experienced testers. The number of experienced testers on a team may contribute to how we recruit when we have an open position. If we have more experienced testers, we can be more flexible on either doing an internal promotion from another group, or adding a recent college grad that would like to pursue a career in testing.
I was fortunate to work for a company early in my career that understood that people wanted a non-management career path. I got to see many senior technology professionals have a rewarding career path without having to give up making a technical contribution to the work. When I worked at subsequent organizations, I always pushed for similar career paths for testers. Being able to promote someone to a principal test engineer is great ! The tester is great at what they do, have no interest in managing others, but should still be rewarded for the level of contribution they make to our success.
hth/reply if you have additional questions for my context,
DH
yes, we have a range of levels (associate, junior, senior, principal) that goes across all individual contributor job titles. You can be a principal architect, an associate project manager, etc. Titles in the test space are a tester, a test engineer, a test analyst, and a test manager/test lead (IC-level). There’s no ratio of seniors nor any stack ranking, but we do need to hire new people every year for balance. Leadership roles have their own levels.
Hi Paul!
From my experience and knowledge, in most medium-sized and bigger companies always some level of seniority and grades, sometimes it’s about your knowledge or knowledge + experience, and sometimes (in some companies) it’s more about the number of years you’ve worked in the industry/company. Quite often the levels are junior, middle, senior, and lead, and then there are titles and positions, there are lots of them - team lead, test lead, test manager, QA manager, head, director, etc, then different titles for positions such as QA auto, automation test engineer, QA engineer or Analyst, SDET, etc. Many companies, e.g. Amazon, have different grades like QA Engineer I, II, or III, etc. So it may become quite complicated from company to company and in any particular company, there is usually a way, a title, or grade/seniority level (or both) for professional growth and career development, quite often it leads to a salary raise (but not always). Generally speaking, this stuff is crazy and messy, there are no common standards so the same level and title may have different responsibilities, tasks, and salaries in different companies. The rules and reasons for how to “achieve” a new grade/level or to be promoted are different. In big corp especially, this stuff might be very political and not about the real value you bring in and knowledge but about your relationships with bosses and how you “sell” your work. This stuff in many cases is even more messy but obviously not everywhere, not in all companies, sometimes everything is cristal clear for everyone in the company. I’ve had both positive and negative experiences in this matter
I worked in various roles as a senior namely senior test engineer.senior analyst,consultant,senior engg lead,senior staff engineer etc.The things that i had to do was the same.This naming is only because of the change in organization.What i did was mostly same.In my current role as project lead i dont have to manage people although im senior.Its an individual role.
I’ve worked at a number of organisations that have senior testers. Usually these are the testers who can work across a project to solve problems, set strategy and influence the project’s thinking about quality. They can be, but not always are, leads and usually are technical individual contributors
Hi @cakehurstryan - I had a read over that blog post - very good read.
Nice looking blog as well. I’ll definitely have a browse round your other posts
but obviously not everywhere, not in all companies, sometimes everything is cristal clear for everyone in the company. I’ve had both positive and negative experiences in this matter 