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The differences between quality assurance developers and contract developers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 2-4 years to become both a quality assurance developer and a contract developer. Additionally, a contract developer has an average salary of $91,433, which is higher than the $91,359 average annual salary of a quality assurance developer.
The top three skills for a quality assurance developer include python, QA and java. The most important skills for a contract developer are C++, javascript, and java.
| Quality Assurance Developer | Contract Developer | |
| Yearly salary | $91,359 | $91,433 |
| Hourly rate | $43.92 | $43.96 |
| Growth rate | 21% | 21% |
| Number of jobs | 175,658 | 249,808 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 68% |
| Average age | 44 | 39 |
| Years of experience | 4 | 4 |
A quality assurance developer creates well-structured, comprehensive, and detailed test cases, test plans, and test strategies. They develop and implement test automated test cases and automation frameworks. Besides setting automation creation and maintenance targets, a quality assurance developer also designs, creates, and executes automation scripts. Moreover, quality assurance developers review technical design documents, requirements, and specifications to deliver timely and useful feedback. Finally, quality assurance developers monitor all software development stages to note, track and solve all system and application issues so as to meet the required quality standards.
Contract Developers develop secure web applications for data collections, quality measurement efforts, and reporting purposes for large-scale performance, wireframes and UI specifications for interactive and static reporting and analysis features, and developing UI to interact with reporting engines. They are involved with system design and technical documentation and responsible for dot net development. In this position, contract developers must excellent in problem-solving, analytical skills and attention to detail, display and manipulate performance metrics, and highly confident dealing with internal and external clients.
Quality assurance developers and contract developers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Quality Assurance Developer | Contract Developer | |
| Average salary | $91,359 | $91,433 |
| Salary range | Between $68,000 And $121,000 | Between $67,000 And $123,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Mateo, CA | San Francisco, CA |
| Highest paying state | California | California |
| Best paying company | NVIDIA | Avanade |
| Best paying industry | Health Care | Finance |
There are a few differences between a quality assurance developer and a contract developer in terms of educational background:
| Quality Assurance Developer | Contract Developer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 68% |
| Most common major | Computer Science | Computer Science |
| Most common college | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Here are the differences between quality assurance developers' and contract developers' demographics:
| Quality Assurance Developer | Contract Developer | |
| Average age | 44 | 39 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 69.3% Female, 30.7% | Male, 71.5% Female, 28.5% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% | Black or African American, 4.4% Unknown, 4.8% Hispanic or Latino, 8.1% Asian, 27.8% White, 54.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% |
| LGBT Percentage | 11% | 8% |