QA outsourcing service rates are finally revealed. For the sake of a true comparison. For the love of statistics. To bate your curiosity. Here it goes.
When it comes to the outsourcing budget, a key point is understanding your business goals and determining the desired success criteria. There are two major options that companies include into consideration before product development: hiring in-house employees or dedicated teams of developers and testers. Quality Assurance is a part of product crafting that’s mistakenly considered not as important as code development. In fact, testing has to be an integral constituent and the sooner you will engage QA experts on the project — the better your results.
In-house testing vs outsourcing
Outsourcing is cheaper than hiring in-house QA employees. However, not all of us know how cheap exactly it may be and why. Let’s say, you have a bunch of code files that need to be tested. The estimated testing time is 100 hours and the number of testing engineers you plan to involve in this process is 3 experts. Take the average hourly rates of the in-house employee and that of a tester from Eastern Europe. Consider taxes, bonuses, travel costs, and here’s what you get:
The difference in pricing is not only impressive, but it explains why enterprise-sized companies tend to outsource big loads of data for Quality Assurance. Now, we move on to even more numbers.
QA outsourcing rates by location
First-rate software testing services are believed to cost a lot, for they’re a highly-demanded solution in the world where ~1000 apps are released every day. Indeed, Glassdoor claims the average Quality Assurance Manager earns $70-100k yearly, while QA experts at such companies as IBM, Amazon, and Sapient earn $100k+. Of course, they do, in the home of Silicon Valley. What about other countries? To dig even deeper into the topic, we review QA costs of the major tech hubs around the world.
QA specialist salary in the USA
In American Express and Apple Computer, Quality Assurance specialist salary is averagely $100k a year, which is approximately $52 an hour. As the stats show, other companies pay employees with the same level of expertise a bit less. However, QA & testing services in the USA are still considered one of the most expensive in the world along with the UK and Australia.
Let’s see how the experience factor influences the cost of QA & testing services:
Entry-level QA managers (0-5 years of experience) earn 8% lower than the national average tester salary in the USA
Late-career (more than 20 years) QA specialist salary is 24% higher
It’s quite anticipated that 44% of QA engineers have from 1 to 4 years of experience in testing, while 24% have 5-9 years. This means companies have to be ready to pay a higher price to those 24% of proficient engineers.
Being promoted to a Quality Assurance Director usually follows up with a salary increase. Professionals who acquire this position averagely earn $110k+ a year. For enterprise-sized companies, the number grows up to $130k+ salary yearly.
QA specialist salary in Western Europe
Forbes claims the main Western European tech hubs are UK, Germany, and France. Pay attention to the local currency.
The United Kingdom
Here’s how the experience factor influences QA testing cost:
Entry-level QA experts (0-5 years of experience) earn 7% lower than the national average tester salary in the UK
Late-career QA professionals (more than 20 years) earn 15% higher
The pattern almost repeats the USA numbers: 45% of QA testers have 1-4 years of experience in testing, while 25% have 5-9 years of experience.
Amazon Quality Assurance engineer earns averagely $96k which is almost ₤70k. This number significantly differs from the UK’s national average, which means the career path can differ for each and every expert separately. It also means that QA project cost estimation will totally depend on the working experience of your employees up to this point.
Germany
In Germany:
Entry-level QA engineers (0-5 years of experience) earn 6% lower than the national average salary
About 50% of Quality Assurance engineers have 1-4 years of experience in testing, while 39% have 5-9 years of experience.
Even though it may seem like Germany’s main IT power has to be congregated in Berlin, hence paid better, the stats prove completely contrary. Testing pros of Berlin earn 6% less than the national average number shows. In fact, Hamburg offers QA specialist salary 8% higher, while Munich tempts the experts with 18% higher salary.
France
Only 25% of QA testers have from 1 to 4 years of experience in testing, while 63% have from 5 to 9 years of experience. Almost three times bigger number of experts with 5-9 years of working experience means fewer people in France opt for this profession nowadays. Adding to that, Quality Assurance engineers of France are 56% female and 44% male.
First-rate software testing services of Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is famous for such a rare and appreciated combo of high quality and reasonable price. Numerous industries outsource software testing, successfully meeting their peculiar business needs.
The figure of 79% of QA experts having 1-4 years of experience in testing proves growing popularity of this profession among young adults in Eastern Europe. Yet, 21% have 5-9 years of working experience which is a convincing number of skilled engineers. For the price of approximately $10 an hour, we feel you can already imagine how cost-efficient QA outsourcing to Eastern Europe is.
Tech jobs in Ukraine gain as much popularity among women as they do among men. In fact, Quality Assurance specifically engages much more women. When we say much more, we mean testing engineers of Ukraine are: 86% female and 14% male. Dispelling an old-fashioned stereotype that women + techs = no good, Eastern European companies are globally-recognized for the high quality of the provided services.
QA tester rate in Asia
Asia is famous for one of the cheapest IT services in the world. They conquer startups and SMBs with a tempting affordable QA testing cost. Unfortunately, the quality usually corresponds to the price of provided services.
India
Approximately 69% of QA testers have 1-4 years of experience, while 21% have 5-9 years of experience. An interesting fact is that 5% of QA engineers in India have less than 1 year of working experience. Quite a big number of people have from 1 to 4 years of working experience in testing, which means this profession is quite new to the country and only starts to gain popularity.
India surprises with a ridiculously-big difference in salaries depending on how many years of testing experience people acquire:
Entry-level (0-5 years of experience) QA tester rate is 10% lower than the national average tester salary
33% of QA engineers in China have 1-4 years of experience in testing
33% have 5-9 years of experience
20% have 10-19 years of experience
13% have less than a year of experience
Here we can trace the unusual number of highly-experienced testing engineers. China’s contribution to technology is vast if not huge, so it’s not a surprise there are so many Quality Assurance engineers who stick to their calling for decades.
QA outsourcing: the ultimate solution
Our research proves that in-house testing is very expensive which logically leads you to outsourcing solution. We can’t tell you that Quality Assurance of your code is cheap. It’s usually not. Moreover, the higher quality you wish to receive — the more expensive the project turns out.
Still, a crucial question to ask is: what matters when outsourcing a project? There are many things to be mentioned including trust, cost-efficiency, velocity, transparency, etc. But really, you know that the MOST important is the quality of what you get. We are here to provide you with all of the aforementioned. Our award-winning team of QA experts is ready to help you finally meeting those business goals. Contact us to get first-rate software testing services.
Just in case you wonder what is QA specialist salary in Australia, it’s ~$58k per year. Very close to the USA pricing. Don’t you think we forgot.
Disclaimer: All rates mentioned are approximate and may significantly differ depending on the wide range of peculiar circumstances.
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