Software quality assurance engineers are below average when it comes to happiness.
At CareerExplorer, we conduct an ongoing survey with millions of people and ask them how satisfied they are with their careers. As it turns out, software quality assurance engineers rate their career happiness 3.0 out of 5 stars which puts them in the bottom 34% of careers.
To put this into perspective, we compared how happy software quality assurance engineers are to similar careers in the industry. Take a look at the results below:
Salaries and satisfaction ratings in similar careers
| Career | Satisfaction | Avg Salary |
|---|---|---|
| Systems administrator | 3.1 | $82k |
| Search engine optimization specialist | 3.1 | $39k |
| Systems analyst | 3.0 | $79k |
| Software quality assurance engineer | 3.0 | $85k |
| Mechanical engineer | 3.0 | $53k |
| Search engine marketing specialist | 3.0 | $43k |
| Ship engineer | 3.0 | $59k |
| Server administrator | 3.0 | $44k |
So what does it mean to be happy in your career? Let’s break it down into different dimensions:
- Salary: Are software quality assurance engineers happy with their salary?
- Meaning: Do software quality assurance engineers find their jobs meaningful?
- Personality fit: How well suited are people’s personalities to their everyday tasks as software quality assurance engineers?
- Work environment: How enjoyable are software quality assurance engineer’s work environments?
- Skills utilization: Are software quality assurance engineers making the best use of their abilities?
Are software quality assurance engineers happy with their salary?
Software quality assurance engineers rated their satisfaction with their salaries 3.3/5. Few are explicitly unhappy with their salaries, with most software quality assurance engineers having generally positive views of their salary.
We asked software quality assurance engineers how fairly compensated they are for their work.
Their response was:
3.3 out of 5 stars
554 software quality assurance engineers
17% of software quality assurance engineers rated their compensation 5 stars
32% of software quality assurance engineers rated their compensation 4 stars
28% of software quality assurance engineers rated their compensation 3 stars
15% of software quality assurance engineers rated their compensation 2 stars
9% of software quality assurance engineers rated their compensation 1 stars
Do software quality assurance engineers find their jobs meaningful?
On average, software quality assurance engineers rate the meaningfulness of their work a 2.5/5. The majority of software quality assurance engineers struggle to find any sort of meaning in their work, likely resulting in less satisfaction with the career overall.
We asked software quality assurance engineers how meaningful they found their work.
Their response was:
2.5 out of 5 stars
555 software quality assurance engineers
8% of software quality assurance engineers rated how meaningful they found their career 5 stars
16% of software quality assurance engineers rated how meaningful they found their career 4 stars
23% of software quality assurance engineers rated how meaningful they found their career 3 stars
28% of software quality assurance engineers rated how meaningful they found their career 2 stars
24% of software quality assurance engineers rated how meaningful they found their career 1 stars
How well are people’s personalities suited to everyday tasks as software quality assurance engineers?
Software quality assurance engineers rated their personality fit with their work an average of 3.7/5. The majority of software quality assurance engineers find their personalities quite well suited to their work, with relatively few having complaints about their fit.
We asked software quality assurance engineers how well their personalities fit into their careers.
Their response was:
3.7 out of 5 stars
657 software quality assurance engineers
23% of software quality assurance engineers rated their career fit 5 stars
43% of software quality assurance engineers rated their career fit 4 stars
23% of software quality assurance engineers rated their career fit 3 stars
7% of software quality assurance engineers rated their career fit 2 stars
4% of software quality assurance engineers rated their career fit 1 stars
How enjoyable is a software quality assurance engineer’s work environment?
As a whole, software quality assurance engineers rated their enjoyment of their work environment 3.6/5. A solid majority of software quality assurance engineers enjoy their work environment, probably contributing to overall higher satisfaction with working as a software quality assurance engineer.
We asked software quality assurance engineers how much they enjoyed their work environment.
Their response was:
3.6 out of 5 stars
658 software quality assurance engineers
20% of software quality assurance engineers rated their work environment 5 stars
40% of software quality assurance engineers rated their work environment 4 stars
24% of software quality assurance engineers rated their work environment 3 stars
11% of software quality assurance engineers rated their work environment 2 stars
4% of software quality assurance engineers rated their work environment 1 stars
Are software quality assurance engineers making the best use of their abilities?
Former software quality assurance engineers on CareerExplorer have rated their skills utilization 2.9/5. Software quality assurance engineers tend to feel that they don’t manage to use their abilities to their fullest, when compared to other careers.
We asked software quality assurance engineers how well their abilities were used in their careers.
Their response was:
2.9 out of 5 stars
659 software quality assurance engineers
10% of software quality assurance engineers rated their how well their skills were utilized in their career 5 stars
22% of software quality assurance engineers rated their how well their skills were utilized in their career 4 stars
27% of software quality assurance engineers rated their how well their skills were utilized in their career 3 stars
27% of software quality assurance engineers rated their how well their skills were utilized in their career 2 stars
13% of software quality assurance engineers rated their how well their skills were utilized in their career 1 stars