Will AI replace a QA Engineer?
Estimated risk score: 79 out of 100
High replacement risk
Estimate · how we score
Our take: Synthetic user agents already run regression suites 24/7. The job survives only if you OWN quality.
Horizon: about 2 years. That is our estimate of how long until headcount in this role falls by 30% or more.
Median salary $95k a year · Engineering
What AI already does well
- Writing E2E test cases from feature specs
- Manual regression testing across browsers
- Bug ticket creation and reproduction steps
What keeps you valuable
A high score means many of today’s tasks in this role can be automated — not that you will lose your job. People in roles like yours stay valuable by moving toward the work AI is bad at. Build on these:
- Test strategy and risk-based test design
- Exploratory testing with deep product knowledge
- Performance and security testing specialization
Keep going
The closest scores in Engineering
How we score. Each score is our estimate, from 0 to 100, of how exposed a role is to AI replacement, calibrated against published research: Goldman Sachs on generative AI (2023), McKinsey’s State of AI surveys, Brynjolfsson and Mitchell (Science, 2017) and Frey and Osborne (2013; published 2017). It is not a prediction about any one person and not career advice. Disagree with a score? Write to hello@yourstopwashit.com. Read the methodology
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