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Automation QA Engineer Roadmap

 Automation QA Engineer Roadmap (2026 – Industry-Ready)

This roadmap is practical, no-fluff, and aligned with what real automation jobs expect today—not just tool knowledge.

 

🧱 Phase 0: Mandatory Manual QA Foundation (Before Automation)

If you skip this, your automation career will stall.

You must already know:

SDLC / STLC

Test design techniques (BVA, EP, Decision Table)

Bug lifecycle & defect writing

Agile & sprint testing

Basic API testing (manual)

 

📌 Automation ≠ replacing testing

📌 Automation = coding test logic correctly

 

🖥️ Phase 1: Programming Fundamentals (0–2 Months)

Choose ONE language and go deep:

Recommended Languages

Java (enterprise standard)

Python (fast learning, QA-friendly)

JavaScript / TypeScript (modern, frontend-heavy teams)

What you must learn

Variables, loops, conditions

Functions / methods

OOP concepts

Class, Object

Inheritance

Polymorphism

Exception handling

Collections (List, Map, Dict)

 

📌 If you can’t write clean logic, automation will fail silently.

 

🌐 Phase 2: Web Automation Core (2–4 Months)

Tool Choice (pick ONE)

Selenium – legacy + enterprise

Playwright – fastest growth

Cypress – frontend-heavy apps

 

📌 2026 advice:

👉 Learn Playwright first. Selenium is still relevant but not future-leaning.

Must-know concepts

Locators (CSS, XPath)

Browser handling

Wait strategies

Iframes & alerts

File upload/download

Cross-browser execution

 

🧪 Phase 3: Test Framework Design (4–6 Months)

This separates junior from professional automation engineers.

Framework components

Page Object Model (POM)

Test Runner (TestNG / PyTest / Playwright Test)

Assertions

Config management

Logging

Screenshots on failure

Reporting

Allure

Extent Reports

 

📌 Interviewers don’t care about scripts

📌 They care about framework thinking

 

🔌 Phase 4: API Automation (Must-Have in 2026)

Automation QA without API automation = ❌

What to automate

CRUD APIs

Auth flows

Contract validation

Data-driven API tests

Tools

Postman (collections → automation)

REST Assured (Java)

Python Requests

Playwright API testing

 

📌 Most real bugs are backend bugs.

🗄️ Phase 5: Database & Backend Validation

SQL skills

SELECT * FROM orders WHERE status='FAILED';

JOIN, COUNT, GROUP BY

Use cases

API ↔ DB validation

Data integrity

Automation test data setup

 

Databases:

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Cloud DBs (RDS basics)

 

🔄 Phase 6: CI/CD & DevOps Integration (6–8 Months)

Automation without CI/CD = demo skill only.

Tools

Git (branching, PRs)

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

What to implement

Run tests on every build

Tag-based execution

 

Parallel runs

Test reports in pipeline

 

📌 This is where real value starts.

🐳 Phase 7: Advanced Automation Skills

High-demand skills

Docker for test execution

Cloud execution (AWS basics)

Headless execution

Parallel & grid execution

Flaky test handling

Test stability engineering

 

🛡️ Phase 8: Quality Engineering Mindset

Move from tester → quality engineer

Shift-left testing

Contract testing

Monitoring production issues

Log analysis

Root Cause Analysis

Quality metrics & dashboards

 

🚀 Career Paths After Automation QA

Option A: Senior Automation QA

Framework ownership

 

CI/CD quality gates

Mentoring

Option B: SDET

Deep coding

API + UI + DB + performance

Dev-like role

 

Option C: QA Architect

Tool decisions

Enterprise frameworks

Cost optimization




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Location: Pune, Maharashtra, India

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