QA Engineer salary
What a qa engineer actually earns, from 636 live job postings blended with the official US OEWS (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) wage anchor. Pick a market for its median and range, then read the seniority split, the trend, and the country comparison below. Updated 2026-07-23.
Switch the market above to see qa engineer pay in the 3 countries our sources cover, each with its own cost of living. The trend, seniority, and state detail below are United States data, where the official record runs deepest.
What the number means
Quality-assurance engineering posts a blended US median near 111,000 dollars, and the number is quietly rising as the role shifts from manual testing to automation and tooling. That shift is also the risk: the manual-testing floor is exactly what automated tooling and AI absorb first, while the automation-engineering ceiling holds and climbs. The spread between the two is wide and widening. If you are in quality assurance, the pay advice and the job-security advice are the same one: move from running tests to writing the systems that run them.
Open qa engineer roles
Live openings tagged to this occupation, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.
- Supplier Quality Engineer IIJabil · ThailandRemoteJul 23
- Functional QA Automation Engineer (with French)– Mid/SeniorData Edge · RomaniaRemoteJul 23
- Process Automation Engineer (Celonis) (m/f/d)Flix · LisbonJul 23
- Manual QA Engineer – MiddleSOFTSWISS · Georgia; Lithuania; Poland; SerbiaRemoteJul 22
- Senior / Staff Quality EngineerZoox · Hayward, CA$178k–$221kJul 22
- Test Engineer (m/w/d)citema systems GmbH · BerlinJul 21
By seniority
Posted-median pay by seniority signal in the title, from our corpus. Noisy at the edges where sample sizes are small.
By country
- Canada$57,061 – $84,771 · median $69,543
- United States$98,012 – $123,017 · median $111,692
- United Kingdom$57,424 – $80,661 · median $69,234
Top-paying US states
OEWS median by state, highest first.
- Washingtonmedian $128,270
- Californiamedian $127,010
- Virginiamedian $123,270
- Marylandmedian $122,310
- Coloradomedian $114,600
- New Yorkmedian $108,800
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Related salaries
- Software Engineer salary$181,991 median
- Backend Developer salary$135,581 median
- Data Engineer salary$124,685 median
Quick answers
How much do QA engineers make?
The blended US median is about 111,000 dollars, with a wide gap between manual testing at the floor and automation engineering above.
Is QA a dying field?
Manual testing is shrinking under automation and AI; automation and quality-engineering roles are growing and pay more.
How does a QA engineer earn more?
By moving from manual testing into test automation and tooling, which is also the more secure side of the role.
Method: bands are the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of live US postings with stated pay, shrunk toward the official OEWS anchor by sample size (the “blended” figure). Trend is the OEWS annual median for SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) code 15-1253. Unemployment is the 2025 BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) CPS (Current Population Survey) annual-average rate for “Software quality assurance analysts and testers.” Live corpus 636 observations, 2026-07-23. Definitions in the glossary.