{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/software-quality-assurance-analysts-and-testers/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers", "soc_code": "15-1253", "category": "Tech", "us_employment": 186740, "median_annual_wage": 104300 }, "verdict": "COOKED", "risk_resistance": 30, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 9, "embodiment": 4, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 5, "judgment_accountability": 10 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Writing test cases from a Jira ticket, generating Playwright selectors, and triaging a red CI build are exactly the text-in/text-out loops LLMs handle now, which caps this at 9 rather than mid-teens; the 9 instead of 4 comes from work that still needs a human in the loop — reproducing a heisenbug that only appears on a specific Android build, deciding which of 300 failing assertions are real versus a selector drift after a UI refactor, and exploratory sessions where the oracle is your own judgment about what the product should do, not a written requirement.", "embodiment": "A 4 reflects that the job is a laptop, an IDE, and a browser for most sprints, with the physical component limited to the device lab — plugging a phone into a USB hub for real-device testing, checking a kiosk or POS terminal build, or verifying a hardware peripheral integration — none of which happens in an uncontrolled environment or on most teams' sprints.", "liability_shield": "There is no state license, no ISTQB requirement in any statute, and no signature on a release; when a defect reaches production the postmortem lands on engineering management and the release owner, and QA's sign-off is an internal Jira transition with no legal weight, which is why this sits at 2 and not 5.", "trust_premium": "Bugs are consumed as tickets by developers who mostly never talk to the filer, and no customer selects a vendor because of who tests it — the 5 rather than 0 is the internal capital a long-tenured tester builds from knowing which subsystems historically break and which PM will fight a severity rating, which is real but transfers to nobody outside the team.", "judgment_accountability": "Most days are bounded by an acceptance criteria list and a defined severity/priority matrix, which holds this under the discretion band; the 10 comes from calls that genuinely are yours — assigning severity on an ambiguous edge case, deciding a flaky test is masking a race condition rather than muting it, and recommending go/no-go into a release meeting where you can be overruled and usually are." }, "rationale": "The modal QA analyst writes test cases from requirements, builds and maintains Selenium/Cypress/Playwright scripts, runs regression suites, triages failures, and files structured bug reports — all text-and-screen work that coding models now do at usable quality and at volume. What resists is the thin senior tier: exploratory testing that finds the bug nobody specified, owning release go/no-go, designing test strategy across flaky distributed systems, and performance/security testing on real devices and hardware. There is no license, no signature requirement, and buyers do not pay for a relationship with a tester, so nothing outside the work itself slows displacement.", "outlook": "Headcount contracts sharply over the next decade as automation generation and self-healing suites absorb script work, leaving a smaller cohort of quality architects and release owners embedded in engineering teams.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: once script authoring and regression triage are model-generated, the surviving role is exploratory/adversarial testing, oracle design for nondeterministic distributed systems, and validating AI-generated tests against real requirements. Watchable signal: job postings retitled 'test architect' or 'quality engineer' with script-maintenance duties dropped and 'AI test review' added. Raises the residual, but shrinks headcount.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Safety-critical software regimes naming a human verification role: FDA cybersecurity/premarket software guidance and IEC 62304, DO-178C DAL-A independent verification, and EU AI Act Art. 17 quality-management/post-market monitoring for high-risk systems already require documented, traceable verification with named responsible personnel. If auditors or notified bodies begin rejecting purely model-generated verification evidence and require a named human to attest test adequacy, a signature-bearing tier appears in medical, avionics, automotive (ISO 26262) and now AI-product QA.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formal release-gate ownership: SRE/change-management policy or SOX-style ITGC audit requiring a named non-developer to sign release go/no-go and own the rollback decision, distinct from the engineer who wrote the code. Watchable signal: change-advisory-board records naming QA as approver, or FDA/notified-body audit findings citing lack of independent release sign-off.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Physical device-lab and hardware-in-the-loop testing — real handsets, wearables, medical devices, vehicle HIL rigs, accessibility testing with screen readers and assistive hardware — cannot be simulated for certification. If certification bodies (e.g., automotive HIL requirements, FDA device usability testing under IEC 62366) continue to require on-hardware evidence, the physical share of the surviving role rises.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with all of these, the ceiling is low and narrow: the liability and embodiment routes exist only in safety-critical verticals (medical, avionics, automotive, defense) that employ a small fraction of the 186,740. For web/SaaS/enterprise-app QA — the bulk of the occupation — there is no plausible license, no signature requirement, and no route to a trust premium: buyers of software never see or ask about the tester. The lever set describes survival of a senior tier, not of the occupation's volume." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2021, "emp": 190120, "wage": 98220 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 196420, "wage": 99620 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 203040, "wage": 101800 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 199800, "wage": 102610 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 186740, "wage": 104300 } ], "from": 2021, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -1.8, "comparable_from": 2021, "spans_soc_revision": false }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "software-developers", "title": "Software Developers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 41, "median_wage": 135980, "overlap": 82, "skills_to_close": [ "Technology Design", "Judgment and Decision Making", "Negotiation" ] }, { "slug": "computer-hardware-engineers", "title": "Computer Hardware Engineers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 40, "median_wage": 161740, "overlap": 70, "skills_to_close": [ "Equipment Maintenance", "Repairing", "Equipment Selection", "Active Learning" ] }, { "slug": "network-and-computer-systems-administrators", "title": "Network and Computer Systems Administrators", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 40, "median_wage": 99130, "overlap": 64, "skills_to_close": [ "Equipment Maintenance", "Repairing", "Management of Material Resources", "Equipment Selection" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }