Quality assurance specialist vs senior quality assurance tester

The differences between quality assurance specialists and senior quality assurance testers 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 specialist and a senior quality assurance tester. Additionally, a senior quality assurance tester has an average salary of $93,770, which is higher than the $63,443 average annual salary of a quality assurance specialist.

The top three skills for a quality assurance specialist include GMP, patients and FDA. The most important skills for a senior quality assurance tester are test cases, QA, and regression.

Quality assurance specialist vs senior quality assurance tester overview

	Quality Assurance Specialist	Senior Quality Assurance Tester
Yearly salary	$63,443	$93,770
Hourly rate	$30.50	$45.08
Growth rate	6%	-
Number of jobs	83,505	81,916
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 58%	Bachelor's Degree, 65%
Average age	44	44
Years of experience	4	4

What does a quality assurance specialist do?

A quality assurance specialist is an individual who is responsible for monitoring, inspecting, and proposing measures to correct and improve a company's product. Quality assurance specialists need to outline quality assurance policies and procedures, making sure that quality standards are assured. It is important that a quality assurance specialist should have strong attention to detail and is excellent in data collection. This work may require a minimum of bachelor's degree and certification to get certified.

What does a senior quality assurance tester do?

A senior quality assurance tester manages junior quality assurance staff. They test documents, lead testing procedures, and ensure customer satisfaction. They also work with an engineering development team to make updates to software.

Quality assurance specialist vs senior quality assurance tester salary

Quality assurance specialists and senior quality assurance testers have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Quality Assurance Specialist	Senior Quality Assurance Tester
Average salary	$63,443	$93,770
Salary range	Between $41,000 And $97,000	Between $73,000 And $118,000
Highest paying City	San Francisco, CA	Seattle, WA
Highest paying state	Rhode Island	New Hampshire
Best paying company	Apple	Sagarsoft
Best paying industry	Pharmaceutical	Technology

Differences between quality assurance specialist and senior quality assurance tester education

There are a few differences between a quality assurance specialist and a senior quality assurance tester in terms of educational background:

	Quality Assurance Specialist	Senior Quality Assurance Tester
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 58%	Bachelor's Degree, 65%
Most common major	Business	Computer Science
Most common college	Stanford University	Stanford University

Quality assurance specialist vs senior quality assurance tester demographics

Here are the differences between quality assurance specialists' and senior quality assurance testers' demographics:

	Quality Assurance Specialist	Senior Quality Assurance Tester
Average age	44	44
Gender ratio	Male, 42.8% Female, 57.2%	Male, 56.4% Female, 43.6%
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, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5%
LGBT Percentage	11%	11%

Differences between quality assurance specialist and senior quality assurance tester duties and responsibilities

Quality assurance specialist example responsibilities.

Manage all NDT relate gauges to ensure calibrations requirements are meet.
Provide employee training and manage all NDT certification records per ASNT SNT-TC-1A.
Lead the HACCP team to ensure full compliance with regulatory and industrial food safety standards.
Manage product and environmental sampling for chemical and microbial analysis to meet HACCP requirements.
Lead cross functional project team to build user-friendly windows base customer support applications which interface with the OmniPlan/OmniPlus mainframe application.
Execute quality processes in tissue banking and medical device, FDA requirements 21 CFR 1271 and 21 CFR 820.

Senior quality assurance tester example responsibilities.

Manage client expectations, provide clear, and concise communication in timely manner to support customers need through the SDLC.
Perform inter-departmental audits documenting ISO compliant results with associate corrective action requests in order to achieve company-wide certification.
Involve in creating automation test suites for progression & regression testing in SoapUI.
Involve in execution of test cases in test lab - QC (ALM) and track defects.
Conduct and coordinate integration and user acceptance testing (UAT) prior to the release of new data feeds into production.
Create functional, negative, smoke and regression test cases base on application requirements and application specification.

Quality assurance specialist vs senior quality assurance tester skills

Common quality assurance specialist skills

GMP, 6%
Patients, 5%
FDA, 5%
CAPA, 4%
Corrective Action, 4%
CFR, 4%

Common senior quality assurance tester skills

Test Cases, 7%
QA, 5%
Regression, 4%
Test Scripts, 4%
PL/SQL, 3%
Java, 3%

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Quality Assurance Specialist vs Senior Quality Assurance Tester

Updated January 8, 2025

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