Building QA teams: hiring, structure, skills, growth.
Team structure:
- QA Engineer — manual + light automation.
- Test Automation Engineer — automation focus.
- Performance Engineer — load / performance.
- Security Tester — pentesting.
- QA Lead — strategy, coordination.
- QA Manager — across teams.
Skill mix:
- Salesforce platform knowledge.
- Testing methodologies.
- Tools (Provar, Selenium, JIRA).
- Some scripting (Apex, JS, SQL).
- Communication with devs and business.
Hiring:
- External hire: existing Salesforce QA experience.
- Internal transfer: train Salesforce admin -> QA.
- Mix: balance experience with platform knowledge.
Sizing:
- Ratio of devs to QAs varies (1:1 to 4:1).
- Mature orgs: more shift-left to dev unit testing; fewer dedicated QAs.
- Manual-heavy orgs: more QAs.
Growth path:
- Junior QA -> Senior QA -> Test Lead -> QA Manager -> Director QA.
- Specialist tracks: Performance, Security, Automation Architect.
Training:
- Trailhead for Salesforce.
- Certifications: Admin, Platform App Builder.
- Test methodology training (ISTQB).
- Tool-specific training (Provar Academy).
Culture:
- Quality is everyone's job — not QA-only.
- Continuous improvement.
- Blameless incident reviews.
- Career investment.
Common pitfalls:
- QA undervalued — dev-heavy decisions.
- No career path — talent leaves.
- No tooling investment — manual everything.
Senior QA insight: a strong QA team prevents production incidents that would otherwise cost much more than the team. ROI is high if invested in.
The senior framing: QA is risk management. Investment proportional to risk.