Late-Career Quality Assurance (QA) Associate with Microsoft Excel Skills Salary

Job Description for Quality Assurance (QA) Associate

The quality assurance (QA) associate ensures that a new product in development (usually software) meets standards for operating and usage. Frequently, this individual attempts to "break" the product under development, and report their experiences, successes, and failures to the team to use in future iterations or versions.

Quality assurance associates must possess excellent verbal and written communication skills; every aspect of their work must be documented in ways that are useful to the development team. They must analyze data for accuracy, report on any improvements implemented, and note any effects of modifications to a product. They must document their processes and, when faults are discovered, they must find ways to make these faults as repeatable as possible so that the development team can efficiently find the solution.

It is important for a quality assurance associate to meet deadlines and may require working longer hours as a product nears release. However, the QA associate typically works during regular business hours.

At entry level, some companies will hire quality assurance associates with only high school degrees, although secondary education is normally a requirement for internal promotion from this position and is preferred by many enterprises. QA associates have excellent attention to detail, as all steps in the quality process must be documented clearly. Computer fluency is normally a requirement, and associates are frequently must be trained on a development team's reporting and evaluating systems. (Copyright 2019 PayScale.com)

• Work with organization members to audit, identify quality problems, and improve operational processes.
• Write, maintain, and disseminate quality manuals and other documentation.
• Investigate and diagnose quality complaints, track down components, and recommend corrective actions.
• Verify logs, databases, and other data to track and flag quality concerns and improvements.

Quality Assurance (QA) Associate Job Listings