QA Engineer
A QA Engineer is the broad, general title for someone who tests software and helps ensure its quality — writing test cases, executing manual and often automated tests, reporting defects, and contributing to test strategy. It's the most common umbrella title across the testing profession.
"QA Engineer" functions as the default, catch-all title in most job postings — the actual day-to-day mix of manual testing, automation, and process work varies enormously between companies using this exact same title, making the job description far more informative than the title alone.
More specialized titles (SDET, Automation Engineer, Performance Test Engineer, Security Tester) generally describe a QA Engineer with a deeper focus in one specific direction — most testing careers start with the general QA Engineer title and specialize from there as skills and interests develop.
