Career coaching · London

QA Engineer in the UK — How to Get Noticed by Recruiters

You have QA experience, but the UK market looks for automation. Here is how to stand out.

Common problems

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Manual testing only, with no automation — recruiters move on

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Selenium is mentioned, but no specific frameworks or languages

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Unclear on the difference between QA Engineer, SDET and Test Lead in the UK

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A CV full of tasks rather than results

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Not knowing what the UK market values in QA beyond bug reports

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Unsure how to move from manual to automated testing

What recruiters check

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Automation: Selenium, Playwright, Cypress — a specific framework

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A language for tests: Python or JavaScript — essential

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API testing: Postman, RestAssured

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CI/CD: Jenkins, GitHub Actions — understanding the pipeline

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Agile / Scrum — experience in an agile team

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ISTQB Foundation — a plus, especially if you are new to the UK market

How AI is changing QA

Companies now ship AI features and agents — and need testers who can prove they work. The strongest QA profile today combines test automation with AI evaluation skills:

→Testing LLM features and AI agents, not just deterministic code
→Automated evaluation suites in CI, alongside your existing test automation
→Human-in-the-loop review: rubrics, and calibrating automated judges against human judgement
→Using AI coding assistants to write and maintain tests faster, with better coverage

New career path: AI QA & LLM Evaluation Engineer →