Full Stack QA (Aka All Rounder)

4 min readJun 7, 2020

Now a days most of us would have came across a buzzword ‘Full Stack QA’ which is trending within recruiters.

Anyone needs an all-rounder, be it a cricket game or Software Testing. Full Stack QA means the QA who is an all rounder in all types of Functional and Non-Functional Testing types.

Continuous learning is a key role in any ones career. So I just thought of giving overview on what skills an aspiring ‘Full Stack QA’ should aim to.

1. Testing Concepts and skills

Most important master Testing Concepts like testing life-cycle, types of testing, defect cycle and one or two bug management software like ALM, TestLink, Jira etc. You should have thorough knowledge of whole STLC (Software Testing Life cycle) process and SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) is good to have.

Test Management Tools : JIRA(Critical), ALM, Rally, Test Link
Deep understanding of STLC (Software Testing Life cycle) process and documents required at each phase
In Depth knowledge of Testing Concepts and Testing mindset

2. Coding Language

In Software Testing industry you can’t ignore power of programming. As a QA also its absolutely imp to have thorough knowledge on at least one language with good understanding of OOPs concept and Data Structure is preferable.

Java or Python or JavaScript (Any one is must)
Shell Scripting, HTML and UNIX basic command knowledge is preferable.
IDE : Intellij or Eclipse (Critical)

3. SQL

You might have heard the phrase “DATA is the new oil”. When world is moving towards Big Data/Data Science/ML etc, you can’t ignore importance of SQL which is the base of data analysis.

You must learn how to query Structured Database like Oracle, MySQL etc and Non Structured Database like MongoDB etc

Oracle SQL or PLSQL or MySQL (At least one is critical)
MongoDB query or any other NOSQL Database query (Good to have)

4. API Testing

World is moving from Monolithic application (A single chunk) to Micro Services architecture. Also increase of Open Source Platform, which provides facility to plug and use has made world to adopt it aggressively. Hence understanding of API’s and Micro-services Architecture is necessary for a QA.

Rest API and SOAP API (Both are critical)
GraphQL (Good to have) as its use is increasing across industry.
Understanding of Json and XML is Must
Tools : Postman (Critical), SoapUI (Good to have)

5. Automation Testing

This term has increased importance of Testing to another level. Automation Testing has became essential for a QA’s resume. Lets check different tools and areas in it.

Web Application Automation : Selenium (Critical), Protractor, CyPress and others
API Automation : PostMan(Critical), Rest Assured Framework(Critical), SoapUI and others
Mobile Applications : Appium (Critical) and others
Build Tool knowledge : Maven or Gradle (Critical)

Apart from this one should have knowledge on Framework creation and maintenance.

6. Performance Testing

Performance Testing is done to provide stakeholders with information about their application regarding speed, stability, and scalability. More importantly, Performance Testing uncovers what needs to be improved before the product goes to market. Many MNC’s has separate team for this but now a days it’s one of the expectation from Management.

JMeter (Critical)
LoadRunner, Locust IO and others are Nice-to-have skill

7. DevOps Knowledge

To achieve such speed and agility, it is important to automate all the testing processes and configure them to run automatically when the deployment is completed in the QA environment. Specialized Automation Testing tools and continuous integration tools are used to achieve this integration.

Now a days it has became important for a QA to get knowledge on Application infrastructure, architecture and CI/CD Tools.

Jenkins and Process of Integration with Automation Suite(Critical)
Declarative or Scripted Jenkins Pipeline as a code Syntax knowledge (Nice-to-have)
Application Infrastructure/Architecture knowledge
Git, Bit-bucket (Mandatory)
AWS or Azure knowledge (Nice-to-have)

7. Security Testing

The goal of security testing is to identify the threats in the system and measure its potential vulnerabilities, so the system does not stop functioning or is exploited. Similar to Performance Testing many MNC’s has separate team for this or connect with Third Party tools but now a days it’s becoming one of the expectation from Management.

Manual
SonarQube, BurpSuite, Nogotofail (Nice-To-Have)

8. Agile Methodology

The widest practice that is followed is Agile. Start here, learn what is Agile, you don’t have to master everything just understand how teams work when they follow Agile methodology.

There are several concepts in Agile :

Kanban, Scrum, Retrospective, Daily Stand up