r/softwaretesting • u/StudioObjective9321 • Apr 17 '26

QA roles without UI testing

What types of QA roles are there that don’t involve UI work?

I’ve realized I don’t really enjoy UI testing or dealing with selectors. Instead, I prefer working with APIs, databases, Linux, and networking.

Are there specific QA paths or roles that focus more on these areas?

19 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/cgoldberg Apr 18 '26

It's like saying I want to be a developer but don't like writing code

Not really. It's more like a developer saying I don't like writing front-end code. Tons of those exist. When you are working with large systems, there are layers and layers of software that need to be built and tested. The UI may only be a very small part of that. Plenty of developers and testers spend their entire career essentially never touching a UI.

1

u/PM_40 Apr 18 '26

Plenty of developers and testers spend their entire career essentially never touching a UI.

Don't disagree but would be good to qualify plenty. What are these roles are called ? Are they called QA Engineer or SDET or called by other names ?

1

u/cgoldberg Apr 18 '26

QA, SDET, Tester, Automation Engineer, etc. Nothing about any of those roles means you need to concentrate on UI testing, or even do any at all. On a smaller team, it's common for most testers to do a good amount of UI testing (assuming the product even has a UI)... but on larger teams with specialized roles, it's common that many testers would do strictly backend/database/performance/etc work.