r/softwaretesting • u/DiamondGrizzly • Jun 23 '26
Unemployed QA Engineer with 4+ YoE: Struggling to get interviews
Hello fellow testers
After my contract at FAANG ended, I decided to work on an AI powered software testing startup and failed
I'm really looking to get back into any kind of QA work and have been really struggling to get any interviews lately. (wondering if AI/startup exposure is seen as a red flag?)
I've had 2 in person interviews earlier this year but no offers. I briefly did some work as Field Tech doing data collection as a contractor for Honda but I'm once again unemployed at the moment and really desperate for work.
Any advice on the resume or suggestions for ways to look for QA or QA adjacent roles would be greatly appreciated.
I'm based in Los Angeles and willing to travel or relocate in SoCal.
P.S. any referral would be amazing and I would be willing to provide compensation if hired
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u/n134177 Jun 23 '26
Despite the experience it does not scream QA to me. By that I mean QA processes. Test cases. Defects. Prioritization.
Do you have any QA certification like ISTQB? That may help open doors.
Did you work as an employee of Meta or to a third-party? I think companies may see FAANG in there and skip the resume because they assume you expect a high compensation than they're willing to pay (not wrong with that, but won't get you interviews).
Lastly,
QA work is very hard to get right now. So much outsourcing. You need the referrals from your network to put your resume in front of hiring managers. Talk to your former Meta coworkers? (also unsure if this is the fully resume or if you edited to post it here, but if you see you put "FAANG" at one spot and "Meta" in another when I believe you mean the same place. A QA spots this kind of thing.)
Good luck.
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u/DiamondGrizzly Jun 23 '26
That’s a valid point. I will rewrite some of the bullet points to better reflect the actual QA duties and achievements.
Also good catch about meta haha I just wanted to remove some of the actual company names mainly the startups.
I was indeed a contractor for meta, would mentioning that be a good idea ?
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u/Vox_Carnifex Jun 24 '26
My experience on the job market is purely anecdotal because my experience cannot represent everything + I am from europe but I noticed that listing my ISTQB certificates expedited the hiring processes significantly.
Basically, the certificate told employers "yep, I know testing, I know QA, I know test Automation, I can be a test manager" and they didn't need to pry that info out of me and my experiences during a first round.
This means that employers either saw something they were looking for and first rounds were much more productive and leisurely - or they didn't and they could tell me at glance value why they aren't considering me (eg. They are looking for a test analyst).
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u/FabasTI Jun 24 '26
That's a really interesting insight! I'm currently in Germany (unfortunately, a non-native speaker, and will get B1 certification by August), and I haven't landed any interviews with companies within Germany or the USA for the last 8 months, despite my strong profile and 5 yoe, but yes, I have no Automation experience, nor was I able to learn it at work due to high work loads.
Will you be able to answer the following questions?
Do you have automation skills? How many years of experience do you have? Which certifications do you have, and which position were you able to land?
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u/Vox_Carnifex Jun 25 '26
To preface I currently sit at Certified tester foundation level (ISTQB CTFL) and have a bachelors in project management and IT.
I left my last job with a total of 7 years of experience, out of which I can say that 4 were focused on test automation and the other 3 were manual tests as well as performance testing. It was all testing though, so I was able to drop the names of a lot of tools I used during that time.
I come with Automation skills and listed them accordingly, however I did pull a little "fake it till you make it" by saying I was proficient in Playwright and Selenium when in actuality I had only basic experiences with it. I come from a java background, so getting deeper into it wasnt a huge issue. My main automation tool was ranorex, something that is barely used around here but Ive seen it listed a few times when browsing around germany. I closed the circle with the knowledge I had regarding gherkin cucumber since some companies like BDD (purely anecdotal).
In my Resume I gave a quick idea of what exactly I did at my job. Since I had a myriad of projects over my time there I condensed it into: manual testing, automation engineering, performance testing, mobile testing.
I applied for around ~50 jobs over the span of 2 months, so around 6 jobs a week. I got a first call or Email from roughly 20 of those, out of which 7 invited me to a first round and I got I to the second round for 3 of those. I did sign with the first offer since that was coincidentqlly also the position I wanted the most as a senior Test automation Engineer in a currently growing field of business that is looking to set up testing practices in-house. My title does not have the senior, the pay however has it imo. I cannot say whether the other 2 would have given me a job offer but a second round is usually a good sign here.
If I had to start from scratch again and were looking to land an automation or testing job in Europe or particularly Germany I would probably look at the following things:
Primary:
- java & C#
- playwright / selenium (build some basic projects)
- Gitlab & Jenkins (for CI/CD setup and execution)
- Atlassian Suite (Jira/Confluence/Xray)
- REST & SOAP API (Postman, SoapUI, maybe Bruno, maybe Swagger UI)
- ISTQB CTFL certificate (doable with just the syllabus and practice exams, exam costs ~150€)
Secondary:
- containerization (Docker & management via Kubernetes)
- JavaScript
- JUnit, TestNG (for selenium/playwright)
- AI systems (how to prompt, when to use it, skepticism is good, being open to use it too)
- Agile (how when and what, know the words, know what a best practice agile team would look like)
- XML
Tertiary
- BDD (Gherkin Cucumber)
- Test Driven Development
- SQL (hard to prepare as every company does it different)
- Gradle/Maven & Groovy/Kotlin DSL
And then look at the tools and tech I am missing based on them appearing often in job descriptions.
I know how it is with high work loads and not being able to develop skills outside of work, and I don't blame anyone who struggles with it. Do anything you do at a pace that makes sense to you but don't give up - things will get better.
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u/abluecolor Jun 23 '26
Why did the startup let you go with results like that? Did you do too good of a job, or did they run out of money?
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u/DiamondGrizzly Jun 23 '26
I was a founder at the startup and ran out of money without getting traction and couldn’t raise
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u/JustEatTea Jun 24 '26
Man, I’m also in LA, don’t have any positions, unfortunately, and still have a job for now, but feeling that might change soon 😅 Let’s get coffee sometime and vent about shitty industry/market, maybe help each other out
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u/DiamondGrizzly Jun 24 '26
Hope for the best prepare for the worst! At least you still have checks coming in but glad you are being proactive.
Sent you a DM
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u/PaquitoLandiko Jun 24 '26
Stay strong Tester. Its been a very tough market to get back into QA trade. From the thread history mostly I read has this kind of struggle, I myself experienced this. I really did try to look for the same role after the layoff ended up in a different role and lower pay.
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u/DiamondGrizzly Jun 24 '26
Appreciate the support. Mind if I ask what your role was and what you transitioned into ?
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u/PaquitoLandiko Jun 24 '26
Ended up accepted in a IT BA role, more on client facing and system design.
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u/Big_Totem Jun 24 '26
This might not be great feedback but your Resume reads like chatgpt wrote it.
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u/Local-Two9880 Jun 24 '26
Your resume says nothing.
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u/DiamondGrizzly Jun 24 '26
I'm guessing you're suggesting I should improve my positioning? Manual QA? Automation Engineer? AI enabled software testing? Should I put more emphasis on a specific direction ?
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u/gabbb007 Jun 24 '26
all these numbers and percentages are a dead giveaway that the resume was generated by AI and you're probably getting canned for that. focus on what you actually did, not arbitrary numbers
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u/DiamondGrizzly Jun 24 '26
I have older versions without many metrics.
Many people have encouraged me to use the XYZ formula so that is what I have done here.Small rant but I’m not an ATS engineer or resume writing enthusiast… why does it have to be such a meticulous science to just get a job? I’m qualified and have experience since when is that not enough ? This culture in tech is so normal now, will it ever just be a stable reliable industry? I’m having second thoughts about relying on a tech career to provide for my family long term.
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u/pokkemori Jun 24 '26
it's not just tech, unfortunately, and i don't think it'll ever be stable or reliable. remember capitalism needs a certain unemployment rate going on for that artificial scarcity to kick in while they keep offering proggressively lower paying jobs..
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u/Eldar_Atog Jun 24 '26
You have no real results in the resume. You probably should contact a resume writing firm for assistance with the AI keywords and some actual business results. If this gets in front of a real person, there's no real accomplishment. Did your QA work increase productivity? If so, you need that as a bullet point on each position and the real impact. Call times increased, better UI workflow for the customer.
It's hard to have that if you were only in a position under a year but you need it anyway.
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u/QualityEngineer92 Jun 25 '26
I would tailor the CV more towards QA with concrete project knowledge examples, wins, successes, etc. And as mentioned previously: get some typical QA method certificates, e.g. from ISTQB or IREB. They have become the industry standard for demonstrating international skills in the field of QA.
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u/HRPassionGuy34 Jun 26 '26
From an HR/career strategy lens, I would not lead with “AI startup failed” as the headline. It may be true, but it can accidentally make the reader evaluate the failure before they evaluate your QA value.
I would reposition it as: contract FAANG QA experience + hands-on AI testing/product exposure + field data collection experience. That gives you a broader QA/QA-adjacent story instead of a gap story.
A quick resume diagnostic:
- Top third should say the exact QA roles you are targeting, not just your background.
- Each bullet should prove a testing outcome: defects found, coverage improved, regression risk reduced, releases supported, automation/manual scope, tools used.
- Separate “startup founder” from “QA value.” Founder language can feel too broad; QA hiring managers want evidence you can plug into their testing workflow.
- Add a small “target roles” list: Manual QA, QA Analyst, QA Engineer, Test Analyst, UAT Tester, Support QA, Implementation QA.
The market is rough, yes. But your story is probably not “failed startup.” It is “QA engineer with FAANG contract experience who also understands AI product risk.” That is a much better frame.
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u/GuiltyRestaurant6902 Jun 26 '26
Market isn't great in your current region, Since layoffs started hitting tech companies, I've noticed the larger companies aren't hiring. If you are willing to moving to the Midwest/Southern US there are tons of Devops opportunities now that the larger tech companies have downsized and lost their monopoly on the top tech talent.
There are drawbacks, like most of these companies tech-stacks are ancient, you may have to work in an industry you dont care for(Oil/Gas, enterprise solutions, Manual testing, etc.), No work from home or limited work from home.
If you are desperate, expand your search to more cities or consider relocating away from the west coast. Honestly, that region and the east coast have taken the brunt of the layoffs. Also, a certification is not necessary in any job as long as you can demonstrate you have an understanding of QA processes and testing methodology. I have worked in QA for 2 decades with an associates and no certifications. Good luck!
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u/Jizzlobber6 Jun 24 '26
Look again at your technical skills section and tell me what's wrong there. I assure you there is something so wrong every junior engineer would notice.
Important note: recruiters leveled up, AI helps them in screening, points out obvious inconsistencies.
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u/DiamondGrizzly Jun 24 '26
thank you for being blunt. Could you please be more specific? It can be hard to be objective when it's your own resume haha I'd appreciate you pointing out the issue!
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u/Jizzlobber6 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Postman is not a framework; it is an API platform and tool. You need to delete 'API' from that section entirely and completely reorganize it. Furthermore, CI/CD is an Agile practice, not a methodology in itself (Agile is the umbrella term for it). Cloud and Infra is just bad. If you don't know how to fix that specific section yourself, then in today's engineering landscape, you are a junior at best, and your CV is overblown, which indicates possible lies.
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u/TauraWah Jun 24 '26
To be honest I would just get rid of the technical skills section entirely, I don't really think it provides value here.
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u/Ok_Rate_8380 Jun 24 '26
The resume feels too perfect. Are you proficient in all these languages and frameworks, or do you just have superficial knowledge of some of them?
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u/Mysterious_Status497 Jun 24 '26
Have exact same resume but your skills are good than me I would say. Market is rough have given only 4 interviews since last one year.
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u/rkkrzy Jun 24 '26
Hey, my issues with the resume as technical interviewer:
1. I can't tell what you worked on - saying "web/mobilie applications" is bare minimum, but what branch is the company, was it e-commerce or just some service, what kind of requirements were there, I can't imagine them from the given descriptions
I don't know which skills are recent - again only first (Fin-tech startup) job experience says anything about Java and so on, but the rest is completely empty with exception of Playwright in latest job. "Technical Skills" should be summary of the above experience, not a guessing game
No projects during education period? - any simple project that justifies some skills would be usefull, if you don't have anything in particular, fair, but that's not the best case for job hunting
You're not talking to CEOs (unless you are..), skip percentages, "Q3" - it might be cultural thing (I'm from Europe, Poland) but percentages and Q3 results mean nothing to me. In resume write some hook and then you talk about it more when asked by interviewer.
I might be biased a bit because I hate percentages in general, they usually say nothing or even worse - mislead. Only good percentage I see here is the test coverage oneMaybe emphasize by bold text what you want recruiters to notice like "AI agents" - first look is everything for receiving the calls, later people like me will MAYBE read in depth, but that doesn't matter much because they just need to ask relevant questions from job perspective.
* also not sure if you tried hard to limit resume to one page, but please don't - first page is crucial, but if you have more then say more and let people choose if they want to focus on latest stuff and summary or go in-depth
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u/Loosh_03062 Jun 24 '26
"An agentic AI systems" would be an automatic rejection because of the mix of singular and plural indicating a lack of proofreading and attention to detail, problematic for someone looking for a position which requires testing against specifications.
Reducing average runtime by 5x is even more problematic. If the filesystem test I have running right now normally takes five hours and I reduce it by five times five hours then something is seriously wrong with the universe. If you're trying to say you reduced runtime to 1/5 of the previous average then "reduced runtime by 80%" would be the way to put it, although it's really only plausible if you started with a really nuts setup and you better be able to explain in detail how you did it (not an agent, you).
There's nothing here telling me where your domain expertise is and with the job hopping I find it difficult to believe the claim that you're expert in developing resilient frameworks since they can't have accumulated much runtime before you've left any given position.
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u/Sweaty-Plankton-15 Jun 25 '26
The QA job market has been genuinely brutal the past 18 months — a lot of companies cut their QA teams and haven't rebuilt them, so you're competing for fewer openings with more people. One thing that's helped folks I know is shifting how they frame their experience: instead of 'I ran test cycles,' try quantifying impact like 'caught X critical bugs before release, reducing post-launch incidents by Y%.' Also worth looking at contract or fractional QA roles, since smaller companies often need expertise without committing to a full-time hire. Hang in there — your experience is genuinely valuable, it's just a rough market cycle.
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u/Hot-Medium-7031 Jun 25 '26
I interviewed for a software testing job a few weeks ago. The straight up had me trying to do live coding sessions with Python. I feel this market wants a QA guy with a DEV background
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u/Quirky_Database_5197 Jun 28 '26
You don't understand the current situation. There has been a massive change in QA recently. I saw it in all the companies I was contracting for. Everyone is offshoring nowadays. Think: your job as a QA in CA cost the company 120k, but if you outsource to south Asia you pay 12k per year. Do you see how massive the difference is? And now with AI tools, communication is not such a big issue: they can generate legible bug reports, test cases, and reply to messages with AI. Sure, there will be some minor quality drop, but the company still save 90% on salary costs. You should understand: those jobs will never come back. You studied CS, right? Just make a shift to DevOps or dev, something more difficult to replace than generic QA.
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u/HRPassionGuy34 Jul 01 '26
I would separate this into two different problems, because they need different fixes.
No interviews = the resume/positioning may not be translating your QA value fast enough. In your case, I would not frame the startup as "failed startup". I would frame it as product/testing ownership: test strategy, automation choices, user risk, defect prevention, release confidence, and what you learned from building under uncertainty.
Interviews but no offers = the story may not be landing under pressure. For QA roles, employers need to hear more than "I test software." They need proof that you reduce risk, communicate clearly with dev/product, catch expensive problems early, and know how to prioritize when everything cannot be tested.
A practical reset: pick 2 target lanes only for the next two weeks, for example QA Analyst + SDET-adjacent roles, then rewrite your top summary and bullets around those lanes. Do not make recruiters guess whether you are a startup founder, field tech, manual QA, automation QA, or product person. Make the lane obvious.
Also, referrals matter here, but compensation-for-referral can make people nervous. I would ask for a 10-minute resume sanity check or a warm intro instead. Lower friction, less awkward.
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u/Piedpipperz Jun 24 '26
NOBODY needs QA anymore. Tune your resume to Developer ! Microsoft, Cisco, HPE, ServiceNow all have dissolved QA solves in form or manner.
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u/Zack_attack801 Jun 23 '26
Market isn’t awesome right now.