Quality Assurance is the discipline of ensuring that products, systems, or services meet specified standards of quality, reliability, safety, and performance. Whether in software, manufacturing, medical devices, food & beverage, pharma, consumer goods, etc., QA is about catching defects, preventing issues, verifying compliance, and making sure customers/end-users get what they expect (or better). Roles in this sector include QA Specialist / QC Analyst / Tester, QA Engineer, QA Manager, Validation Engineer, Compliance / Auditor, etc. Education can range from high school / technical training (for entry / QC roles) up to bachelor’s (engineering, life sciences, computer science, etc.), with many roles benefitting from certifications and/or domain-specific regulatory knowledge.
$102,610
Average Salary
75,000
Annual Sector Growth
129,200
Job offer
15%
Companies
Automation, Test Automation & Tools — increasing use of automated testing (software), vision systems & AI for detecting defects, automated inspection in manufacturing.
Regulatory & Compliance Pressure — industries like pharma, medical devices, food, biotech demand stricter compliance with FDA, ISO, GMP, GLP, etc. Validation, audits, documentation are increasingly central.
Shift Left & Early Testing — integrating QA earlier in the product development lifecycle (software or physical product) rather than just final inspection; continuous integration / continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, unit/integration testing.
Data & Analytics in QA — using quality metrics, dashboards, defect trend analysis, predictive analytics to anticipate failures or quality issues.
Quality Assurance in Non-Traditional Sectors & Remote/Distributed Work — as digital products proliferate, QA roles are expanding beyond traditional manufacturing into SaaS, fintech, health tech; remote/distributed QA teams, crowd testing, etc.
Test planning / test case design; proficiency in both manual and automated testing tools.
Domain knowledge / regulatory knowledge depending on sector (e.g. pharma, medical device, food safety, ISO standards).
Analytical skills & defect tracking: ability to analyze failures, root cause, trend out defects.
Technical skills: scripting, automation frameworks, QA tools, sometimes familiarity with programming / APIs (especially for software QA).
Communication & documentation skills: writing clear bug reports; working with cross-functional teams; maintaining documentation & compliance records.