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QA and testing are an essential part of the Agile software development life cycle (SDLC), and, especially in a DevOps or cloud development context, automated QA and testing are increasingly seen as mandatory. That means QA engineers are in high demand. We analyse the average salary and ranges a QA engineer can expect to make as a benchmark for anyone preparing to recruit QA engineers or if you are one, your own salary.
The role is also sometimes described as QA automation. Talent.com data says the average QA engineer salary in the USA is a little over $100,000. In Ukraine, it’s more like $3500-$4000 a month or $42,000-$48,000.
But it also has to be taken into account that Ukrainian QA engineers take home around 80% of their gross salary. In the USA, though it can vary considerably from state to state, a net take-home pay of around 70% of gross salary would be about average while in Germany, depending on an individual’s personal circumstances (married/single, children etc.) over 40% of gross income can be lost to tax.
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From an employer’s point of view, QA engineers can also cost a lot more or less in social security contributions and other taxes and expenses like insurance policies depending on the country in which they are employed.
‘QA engineer’ or ‘QA automation’ is also a relatively broad title. Salaries attached to the role can vary significantly depending on what scripts, programming languages and other software development and CI/CD tools and technologies a QA engineer’s tech stack is comprised of.
Some of the factors that can most influence a QA developer’s salary are:
- Level of expertise
- Kind of expertise
- Years of experience
- Tech stack – the scripts, programming languages, frameworks, tools and technologies a QA engineer is proficient in using
- Location
- Language skills eg. fluent English or German
But keeping in mind the vagueness of ‘QA engineer’ as a stand-alone job description, in this blog we’ll run you through some of the most reliable international data sources for QA engineer salary ranges around the world. We’ll present data from:
- Germany
- Switzerland
- The UK
- East Europe – Ukraine, Poland and Belarus
- India
- The USA
If you would like a more accurate forecast of what you should expect to pay a QA engineer with a particular profile and tech stack in Eastern Europe or any of the other nearshore markets we have a presence in please do get in touch. Our HR department will be happy to give you an accurate range based on current market dynamics.
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QA automation engineer rates
If you have taken or are considering the strategic decision to recruit QA engineers via an IT outsourcing provider rather than directly, you can expect the rates you pay to be slightly different to the salary range data we cover here. An IT outsourcer will typically look for a margin of around 3o% so the rates you can expect to pay for a given QA automation engineer would be roughly their salary and associated costs to the direct employer plus the margin.
You will, however, save on recruitment costs and benefit from the recruitment expertise of your partner, which should reduce the chance of hires not working out. That can be especially invaluable when recruiting from nearshore markets where there can be differences in professional culture and norms as well as administrative and legal specifics and hurdles that local knowledge and experience can smooth out.
QA engineer salary range in German
Germany is Europe’s second largest market for IT specialists after the UK and its biggest national economy overall. It’s also a relatively high tax and high salary economy which makes talent expensive. The cost burden can be particularly onerous for higher paid roles such as IT specialists.
According to the jobs portal de.talent.com and based on 158 reported salaries, the average QA engineer salary in Germany is €4375 a month or €52,500 a year. The average range suggested by the de.talent.com data indicates more junior QA engineer roles offer a salary starting at around €2938 a month or €35,250 a year and senior positions can command up to €6250 a month or €75,000 a year.
Source: de.talent.com
Data from another popular German jobs portal, stellenanzeigen.de, shows a higher range and puts the average QA engineer salary in Germany at €73, 218 a year or €6102 a month. Stellenanzeigen puts the lower end of the QA engineer remuneration range at €49,540 a year or €4128 a month, rising to €95,133 a year or €7928 a month.
Source: https://www.stellenanzeigen.de/
Average QA engineer salary in Switzerland
As one of the highest salary national economies in the world, the presumption would be QA engineer salaries in the central European tax haven are higher than across the border in neighbouring Germany. Our data sources indicate that is indeed the case.
Based on data from 74 salaries, ch.talent.com data indicates the median QA engineer (the equivalent term ‘test engineer’ is used) salary in the country is CHF110,000 (€112,806) a year or CHF9167 (€9401) a month. At the lower end of the average range, ch.talent.com suggests the lowest paid QA engineers based in Switzerland still earn CHF97,500 (€99,987) a year or CHF8125 (€8332) a month. The best paid senior roles can pay up to CHF157,400 (€161,415) a year or CHF13,117 (€13,452) a month.
Source: ch.talent.com
Another good data source for IT specialist salaries in Switzerland, the specialist jobs portal swissdevjobs.ch, shows a broader range of QA engineer salaries in the country. The lower end of the range looks, in our opinion, more realistic for junior positions, with the bottom 10% of salaries starting at CHF62,500 (€64,094) a year or CHF5208 (€5341) a month.
Swissdevjobs.ch data puts the median QA engineer salary in Switzerland at CHF100,000 (€102,551) annually or CHF8333 (€8546) a month, slighly lower than the ch.talent.com data indicates. The top end of the range for senior QA engineers is also lower at up to CHF115,000 (€117,934) a year or CHF9583 (€9827) a month.
Source: swissdevjobs.ch
Average QA engineer salary in the United Kingdom
Europe’s largest labour market for IT specialists, salaries in the UK are traditionally slightly higher than in Germany for many roles. Does that hold true for QA engineer salaries?
uk.talent.com data, based on a broad sample of 5207 salaries, puts the median QA automation engineer salary in the UK at £50,000 (€58,273) per annum or £4167 (€4856) a month, which is 11% higher when converted into euro than the same data source provides for equivalent roles in Germany. At the lower end of the range, uk.talent.com indicates salaries starting at £42,494 (€49,523) a year or £3541 (€4127) a month.
The range given suggests senior QA automation engineers can earn up to £65,000 (€75,755) annually, or £5417 (€6313) a month.
Source: uk.talent.com
As was the case in Germany, another UK data source specialising in IT specialist positions, itjobswatch.co.uk, indicates a broader range for quality assurance engineers based in the country. Figures provided by the portal give the median salary for QA engineers in the UK as £55,500 (€64,683) a year or £4625 (€5390) a month. The data also shows 11% year-on-year salary inflation for QA engineers in the UK, keeping their remuneration in line with inflation.
The data indicates the QA engineers in the bottom 10th percentile for salary in the UK earn £41,350 (€48,192) a year or £3446 (€4016) a month. QA engineers in the UK in the top 90th percentile of earnings are paid up to £80,000 (€93,236) a year or £6667 (€7770) a month.
Source: ITjobsWatch.co.uk
Average QA automation engineer salary in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe has been a popular nearshore IT outsourcing destination for many years now with companies and other organisations from the more developed, higher salary economies of Western Europe. The convenient time zones and travel logistics, generally good English and cultural compatibility combined with relatively lower salaries despite the high quality of IT specialists to turn the region into a tech talent hotspot. North American tech companies are also highly present in East European labour markets.
The influx of international employers, a trend that has accelerated over the past several years, have driven IT specialist salaries in the region up. They are usually no longer multiples lower than equivalents in Western Europe (with the exception of perhaps Switzerland and Norway) but can still represent significant savings compared to hiring the same level of specialist domestically. That’s especially the case when considering lower tax obligations and auxiliary expenses such as office space, utilities and non-technical staff salaries.
Eastern Europe is made up of a patchwork of many countries at different stages in their economic and political development and there are differences between salary ranges. We won’t go through the entire region country by country here but will dig into the QA engineer salary data from Poland and Ukraine, the region’s two largest pools of IT specialists, as an overview.
K&C has offices in Krakow (Poland), Kyiv (Ukraine – currently temporarily suspended with our Ukrainian staff working from safe regions of the country or abroad since Russia’s invasion of the country in early 2022) and Baku (Azerbaijan) as well as distributed employees based in several other countries in the region.
For accurate, current insight into rates for particular profiles of QA engineers based in Eastern Europe, please do get in touch and we’ll be delighted to provide it.
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Average QA automation engineer salary in Poland
There are an estimated 430,000 IT specialists resident in Poland making it Eastern Europe’s largest tech labour pool by some distance, ahead of pre-war Ukraine’s estimated 275,000.
Data from the jobs portal pl.talent.com based on 477 salaries puts the median annual salary for a QA engineer in Poland at PLN90,000 (€19,123) annually or PLN7500 (€1594) a month. The lower end of the range is given as PLN72,000 (€15,298) a year or PLN6000 (€1275) a month and the upper end for senior QA engineers PLN108,000 (€22,947) a month. 
Source: pl.talent.com
Based on our real-time experience in Poland, those figures seem low. That suspicion is reinforced by alternative data on the average QA engineer salary in Poland provide by the jobs portal Jooble. Jooble’s data is also based on a much larger data set of 11,512 current job offer.
The QA engineer salary range provided by Jooble puts the mean average salary for the role in Poland at PLN197,676 (€42,001) a year or PLN16,473 (€3500) a month. Junior QA engineer roles in Poland, according to this data set, start at PLN116,628 (€24,781) a year or PLN9719 (€2065) a month while senior roles can command up to PLN287,532 (€61,093) annually or PLN23,961 (€5019) a month.
Source: pl.jooble.org
Average QA automation engineer salary in Ukraine
Despite the ongoing war with Russia, which invaded the country in late February this year, Ukraine’s IT services sector is proving robust with IT specialists who haven’t left the country continuing to work from safe regions. While not all international organisations are willing to recruit Ukrainian IT specialists while the war is ongoing, many still are, reassured by the lack of interruptions to work, and its ongoing quality, since the invasion.
Data provided by the specialist Ukrainian tech jobs portal djinni.co suggests the median salary for a QA engineer in Ukraine is around $4000 (at the time of writing there is parity between the euro and USD so we won’t provide conversions) a month or $48,000 annually. Junior QA engineer positions pay an average monthly salary of $1500-$2000 a month or $18,000-$24,000 a year and senior roles can offer salaries of up to $6500-$7000 a month or $78,000-$84,000 annually.
Source: Djinni.co
Average QA engineer salary in India
India is internationally known as a huge outsourcing market and equally a huge IT outsourcing market. The sheer size of the country’s population means there are vast numbers of IT specialists of almost every tech stack imaginable to be found in India. The country’s low salary economy also means IT specialists from India have traditionally been seen by international employers as low cost.
The gap between IT salaries and India and Eastern Europe and the rest of the world has narrowed in recent years, especially for highly skilled senior professionals. However, it is still one of the lowest salary locations on the international jobs market, even for IT specialists like QA engineers.
Data from the jobs portal Glassdoor.co.in, based on 4926 salaries, suggests the average salary for a QA engineer is just ₹540,000 (€6843) a year or ₹45,000 (€570) a month. QA engineer salaries at the lower end of the scale start at ₹300,000 (€3802) a year or ₹25,000 (€317) a month. Senior roles bring in up to ₹1,200,000 (€15,208) a year or ₹100,000 (€1267) a month.
Source: Glassdoor.co.in
Another data source, in.talent.com, puts the median salary for a QA engineer in India at the higher figure of ₹700,000 (€8871) a year or ₹58,333 (€739) a month. The range given starts at ₹600,000 (€7604) per annum or ₹50,000 (€634) a month for junior QA engineer roles. The relative value proximity between the mean and low end of the salary range indicates the large majority of QA engineer roles in India are relatively junior positions.
At the top end of the pay scale, the data indicates a senior QA engineer can earn up to ₹1,800,000 (€22,812) a year or ₹150,000 (€1901) a month.
Source: in.talent.com
Average QA engineer salary in the USA
The United States of America (USA) is the world’s largest economy and its largest labour market for IT specialists like QA engineers. Despite the large number of IT specialists working in the U.S. market, demand exceeds supply for qualified professionals, pushing salaries up in what is already a high salary economy.
Data from talent.com based on a sample set of 10,000 salaries indicates the median QA engineer salary for the USA at $100,009 per annum or $8334 a month. The scale starts at $85,282 a year or $7107 a month for junior roles and rises to $130,000 a year or $10,833 a month for senior positions.
Source: talent.com
An alternative data source, ZipRecruiter.com, arrives at the lower median salary of $86,211 a year or $7184 a month for QA engineers in the USA. The range also starts at a much lower $39,000 a year or $3250 a month for junior roles but arrives at a similar figure to talent.com at the top end of the range – $132,500 a year or $11,042 a month.
Source: ZipRecruiter.com
Hire the QA automation engineers you need with K&C
K&C is a Munich-based IT outsourcing and custom software development company with over 20 years of experience putting together and managing software development teams from Eastern Europe and a number of other popular near and midshore markets.
Lean on our experience of recruiting QA engineers, software testers and other IT specialists from nearshore markets for your next project. We offer flexible models from building and handing over your nearshore team to IT outsourcing with full delivery management and recruitment.
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