QA Engineer Salary & SDET Salary Statistics 2026

The average QA engineer salary in the United States is approximately $100,000 to $111,490 per year, depending on the source and whether it reports base salary, mean wages or total compensation.

The latest official U.S. government data reports a mean annual salary of $111,490 for software quality assurance analysts and testers. Indeed currently estimates an average QA engineer base salary of $100,157, while ZipRecruiter estimates the average SDET salary at $113,906.

Those figures are not directly interchangeable. Government surveys, salary platforms and job-posting datasets measure different worker populations and different forms of compensation.

This report separates:

• Base salary from total employer compensation

• QA engineer, software tester, automation engineer and SDET roles

• Employee salaries from contractor billing rates

• U.S. salaries from international figures reported in local currencies

• Official government data from salary-platform estimates

Key QA Engineer Salary Statistics for 2026

• The official mean U.S. QA engineer salary is $111,490 per year.

• The official median hourly wage is $50.14, equivalent to approximately $104,291 annually at 2,080 hours.

• The occupation employed approximately 186,740 people in the United States in May 2025.

• The bottom 10% earned less than $60,690, while the top 10% earned more than $166,960.

• Indeed estimates an average QA engineer base salary of $100,157.

• ZipRecruiter estimates an average SDET salary of $113,906.

• Using comparable ZipRecruiter estimates, SDETs earn approximately 20% more than QA engineers.

• Software QA employment is projected to grow 10% between 2024 and 2034.

• A QA engineer earning the official mean salary may cost an employer approximately $159,369 annually after benefits are included.

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Average QA Engineer Salary in the United States

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release provides the strongest national benchmark for a quality assurance engineer salary.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 wage data released in May 2026. The annualized median is calculated as $50.14 × 2,080 hours and is not a separately reported BLS annual figure.

The most recent published percentile distribution shows a wide salary range:

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2024 Occupational Outlook Handbook data.

The mean is higher than the median because higher-paid positions pull the average upward. For individual salary comparisons, the median is generally the more representative benchmark.

Indeed currently reports an average QA engineer base salary of $100,157, plus an average reported cash bonus of $3,250 per year. Its estimate is based on approximately 1,700 salaries and was updated on July 20, 2026.

Junior, Mid-Level and Senior QA Engineer Salary

Experience is one of the clearest predictors of QA compensation.

Source: Indeed U.S. salary pages, retrieved July 29, 2026. The junior QA engineer figure is based on only 20 reported salaries and should be treated as lower-confidence than the national and senior estimates.

The current estimates place the average senior QA engineer salary approximately 20% above the general QA engineer average and roughly 72% above the junior estimate.

The salary increase reflects more than years worked. Senior QA engineers are more likely to own:

• Test strategy and release-quality decisions

• Automation architecture

• CI/CD integrations

• API and performance testing

• Flaky-test diagnosis

• Device and environment strategy

• Mentoring and technical leadership

Engineers moving toward more code-intensive roles can also use the progression outlined in Quash’s QA-to-SDET career guide.

Software Tester Salary vs QA Automation Engineer and SDET Salary

Job titles in software testing overlap, but they do not always represent the same technical scope.

A software tester may focus primarily on test execution and defect reporting. A QA engineer may own broader quality processes, while a test automation engineer or SDET is generally expected to write code, maintain frameworks and integrate testing into delivery pipelines.

Using one source reduces the methodological problems caused by comparing unrelated salary platforms.

Source: ZipRecruiter salary estimates retrieved July 29, 2026. “Automation Test Engineer” is the exact title used by the source; employers may also advertise similar positions as QA Automation Engineer or Test Automation Engineer.

Using these same-source figures:

• The average SDET salary is approximately 26% higher than the software tester salary.

• The average SDET salary is approximately 20% higher than the QA engineer salary.

• The automation test engineer salary sits between general QA and SDET compensation.

That does not mean changing a job title automatically produces a 20% raise. SDET positions may contain a different mix of seniority, programming requirements, industries and employers.

The premium is better understood as compensation for additional engineering responsibility, including:

• Building automation frameworks

• Writing maintainable test code

• Debugging application and infrastructure failures

• Integrating tests into CI/CD

• Managing test environments

• Reducing automation maintenance

For more on how those responsibilities differ in practice, see Quash’s complete test automation guide.

SDET Salary Distribution

The average SDET salary does not show how broad the market is.

Source: ZipRecruiter U.S. SDET salary estimates, retrieved July 29, 2026.

SDETs near the upper end of the range are more likely to own framework design, distributed test infrastructure, performance engineering, release pipelines or cross-team quality architecture.

QA Engineer Salary by Industry

Reliable salary-by-company-size data is limited. The BLS does not publish occupational wage estimates by establishment size, so broad claims that large enterprises always pay a fixed percentage more than startups are difficult to defend.

Industry-level data provides a stronger comparison.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2024 medians for major industries employing software QA analysts and testers.

Manufacturing has the highest median among the major industries listed by the BLS. This category includes software-dependent physical products and systems where defects may affect vehicles, electronics, industrial equipment or embedded devices.

The comparison also shows why “working in tech” is not a sufficient salary category. QA work in banking, healthcare, industrial systems, consumer SaaS and mobile applications can involve substantially different risks and technical requirements.

QA Engineer Salary by City

City-level salary estimates can indicate where employers pay more, but the samples are considerably smaller than national datasets.

Source: Indeed salary estimates, retrieved July 29, 2026.

San Francisco’s estimate is approximately 42% above the national figure, while Seattle’s is approximately 31% higher.

These are nominal salary comparisons, not cost-of-living-adjusted figures. The city samples are also small enough that a limited number of high-paying vacancies can materially shift the displayed average.

For that reason, city estimates are useful for directional comparisons but are not strong enough to support precise claims about expected local compensation.

QA Engineer Salary Growth, 2021–2025

To avoid comparing reported annual figures with calculated annual figures, the historical series below uses a consistent annualization method.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hourly figures are multiplied by 2,080 where necessary. The 2024 hourly equivalent is calculated from the reported annual median.

On this standardized basis, the median QA engineer salary increased approximately 6.2% in nominal terms between 2021 and 2025.

Nominal growth does not account for inflation. The increase therefore represents the change in reported dollar wages rather than a 6.2% increase in purchasing power.

Remote QA Engineer Salary

ZipRecruiter currently estimates the average remote QA engineer salary at $100,970, compared with $95,168 for its broader QA engineer category.

Source: ZipRecruiter remote QA engineer salary estimates, retrieved July 29, 2026.

The remote estimate is approximately 6% higher, but this does not establish that remote work itself causes higher pay. Remote listings may contain a different mix of locations, employers, technical requirements and seniority levels.

For SDETs, ZipRecruiter currently reports the same average salary of $113,906 for its general and remote categories. The available data therefore does not support a universal remote-work salary premium.

QA Engineer Salary by Country

International salaries should not be converted into a single U.S. dollar ranking without accounting for purchasing power, taxation, benefits and employment systems.

QA Engineer Salary in India

Indeed currently estimates the average QA engineer salary in India at ₹689,679 per year, based on 148 reported salaries.

The average salary in Bengaluru is higher at ₹875,969 per year, based on 31 reported salaries.

Source: Indeed India salary estimates, updated July 16, 2026.

Bengaluru’s estimate is approximately 27% above the national figure, although the city sample is relatively small.

QA Engineer and SDET Salary in the UK

Current advertised-salary medians in the United Kingdom are:

Source: IT Jobs Watch, six-month period ending July 29, 2026. The available samples included 200 quoted QA engineer salaries, 45 SDET salaries and 37 QA automation engineer salaries.

The UK data shows the same general pattern as the U.S. estimates: automation-heavy and development-oriented testing roles typically advertise higher salaries than general QA engineer roles.

Test Automation Engineer Salary in Canada

Canada’s government Job Bank reports the following hourly wages for test automation engineers:

Source: Government of Canada Job Bank, updated November 19, 2025, using the 2023–2024 reference period.

QA Engineer Salary in Australia

Indeed estimates the average QA engineer salary in Australia at A$95,971 per year, based on 47 reported salaries.

QA Contractor Rates

Contractor billing rates should not be compared directly with employee salaries. Contractors may need to cover their own insurance, retirement contributions, equipment, training, unpaid leave and time between assignments.

Current UK advertised contract rates include:

Source: IT Jobs Watch, six-month period ending July 29, 2026. “Automation Engineer” may include some roles outside software testing.

The senior QA contractor rate was based on 21 quoted daily rates. That smaller sample makes the figure useful as a market indicator rather than a universal benchmark.

Contractors are often used to add temporary capacity during migrations, major releases or automation-framework projects. However, short-term contractor capacity does not remove the underlying maintenance work created by a growing test suite.

That maintenance burden is examined in Quash’s State of Test Maintenance report, while recurring instability is covered in the complete guide to diagnosing flaky tests.

Does ISTQB Certification Increase a QA Engineer’s Salary?

There is not enough reliable evidence to claim that ISTQB certification produces a fixed salary increase.

Certification and training providers frequently publish salary comparisons, but these estimates rarely control for:

• Experience

• Location

• Employer

• Automation skills

• Programming ability

• Existing seniority

More experienced testers may be both more highly paid and more likely to pursue certification. That does not prove the certification independently caused the salary difference.

A 2026 review of ISTQB research found that practitioners associated certification with career recognition, a shared testing vocabulary and structured knowledge. It also identified criticism around theory-heavy content and limited relevance to some agile and automation-intensive environments. The review did not establish a reliable percentage salary premium.

The practical conclusion is that certification may help with screening or structured learning, but programming, API testing, automation architecture and CI/CD skills have a clearer relationship with higher-paying SDET and automation roles.

Gender Pay Gap in Software QA

An analysis by the Society of Women Engineers reports that women working as software quality assurance analysts and testers earned 98% of men’s median earnings.

That was the smallest reported gender earnings gap among the computer occupations included in the analysis.

The figure is an unadjusted occupation-level comparison. It does not prove equal compensation within every employer or seniority level and may not account for differences in hours, experience, management representation, bonuses or equity.

What Does a QA Engineer Actually Cost an Employer?

Base salary is only one part of the cost of employing a QA engineer.

In March 2026, the BLS estimated that wages represented 69.9% of total private-industry employer compensation, while benefits represented the remaining 30.1%.

Private-industry compensation averaged:

• $32.60 per hour in wages

• $14.01 per hour in benefits

• $46.60 per hour in total compensation

That produces a broad loaded-compensation multiplier of approximately 1.43 times base salary.

Applying that multiplier to the official mean QA engineer salary:

Calculation based on the BLS mean QA salary and the March 2026 private-industry compensation split. Figures are planning estimates, not the exact cost of employing a specific worker.

The estimated $159,369 annual employer cost consists of approximately:

• $111,490 in salary

• $47,879 in employer-paid benefits

It does not include recruiting fees, equipment, onboarding time, office costs, management overhead or the cost of leaving a role vacant.

QA Hiring Cost vs an AI Testing Platform

The wrong comparison is:

An AI testing platform replaces a $159,369 QA engineer.

QA engineers do substantially more than execute repetitive tests. They investigate failures, assess product risk, design test strategies and make release decisions that an automated platform cannot fully own.

A more defensible comparison measures how much QA and engineering capacity a platform can recover, avoid or redirect.

Teams can evaluate:

• Manual regression hours removed per release

• Time spent creating repetitive automation scripts

• Automation maintenance reduced

• Flaky-test investigation time recovered

• Additional hiring deferred as test volume grows

• Contractor spending reduced

• Developer time recovered from repeated QA handoffs

• Device and environment coordination reduced

A practical model is:

Annual platform value = recovered QA and engineering capacity + avoided contractor or hiring costs − annual platform cost

At the estimated loaded employer cost of $159,369, one hour of QA capacity represents approximately $76.62.

These figures should be treated as capacity estimates, not as guaranteed savings. A recovered hour only creates value when the team can redirect it toward useful engineering, exploratory testing or release work.

For teams comparing traditional frameworks with newer approaches, Quash has detailed guides covering:

• Mobile testing tools and platforms

• Appium mobile test automation

• Appium alternatives

• Quash vs Appium

Quash’s mobile test executor is designed to reduce repetitive test creation and maintenance rather than position AI as a replacement for QA professionals.

Is QA Engineering Still a Growing Career?

The BLS projects employment of software QA analysts and testers to increase from 201,700 positions in 2024 to 221,900 in 2034.

That represents:

• 10% projected employment growth

• Approximately 20,200 additional positions

• Growth faster than the projected average across all occupations

The role is also changing.

General test execution increasingly overlaps with:

• Test automation

• Software development

• API testing

• CI/CD

• Observability

• Performance engineering

• AI-assisted test generation

• Device and environment management

Current salary data reflects that shift. Roles with deeper programming and automation ownership generally earn more than broad software testing positions.

The effect of AI on testing roles is more likely to involve changes in responsibilities than the disappearance of QA itself. Current adoption and workforce evidence is covered in Quash’s AI testing statistics and trends report.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average QA engineer salary in 2026?

The latest official U.S. mean QA engineer salary is $111,490. Indeed estimates average base pay at $100,157, while the BLS median hourly wage annualizes to approximately $104,291.

What is the average quality assurance engineer salary?

“Quality assurance engineer” and “QA engineer” are commonly overlapping titles. Indeed currently estimates an average U.S. QA engineer base salary of $100,157, while official BLS data reports a mean of $111,490 for software quality assurance analysts and testers.

What is the average SDET salary?

ZipRecruiter estimates the average U.S. SDET salary at $113,906 per year, with a median of approximately $112,600.

Do SDETs earn more than QA engineers?

Using comparable ZipRecruiter estimates, the average SDET salary is approximately 20% higher than the average QA engineer salary. The difference likely reflects the programming and automation responsibilities commonly expected from SDETs.

What is the average software tester salary?

ZipRecruiter estimates the average U.S. software tester salary at $90,490 per year.

What is the average QA automation engineer salary?

Salary estimates vary because employers use titles such as QA Automation Engineer, Automation Test Engineer and Test Automation Engineer interchangeably. ZipRecruiter currently estimates an average Automation Test Engineer salary of $106,656.

What is the average junior QA engineer salary?

Indeed estimates the average junior QA engineer salary at $69,601 per year. The estimate is based on only 20 reported salaries and should therefore be treated cautiously.

What is the average senior QA engineer salary?

Indeed estimates the average senior QA engineer salary at $119,988 per year in the United States.

Does remote QA work pay more?

ZipRecruiter’s remote QA engineer estimate is approximately 6% higher than its general QA estimate. However, the data does not control for location, seniority or employer mix, so it does not establish a universal remote-work premium.

Does ISTQB certification increase salary?

There is no strong public evidence that ISTQB certification produces a fixed salary increase. Certification may help with screening and structured knowledge, but experience and technical automation skills remain major compensation factors.

Methodology and Limitations

This report prioritizes sources in the following order:

1. Government labor and wage datasets

2. Large job-posting datasets

3. Employer-reported compensation models

4. Salary and contractor marketplaces

All dynamic salary-platform figures were checked on July 29, 2026.

Base salary, total compensation, employer cost and contractor billing rates have not been combined into one average.

Country salaries remain in local currencies. No exchange-rate or purchasing-power conversion has been applied.

The historical salary-growth series uses a consistent 2,080-hour annualization method. It reports nominal wages and does not adjust for inflation.

City and junior-level figures use smaller samples than national salary estimates and should be interpreted as directional.

A salary-by-company-size table was excluded because the available public evidence was not strong enough to support a credible startup-versus-enterprise comparison.