Rise of the QA Engineer
If you're building faster, you need to be testing faster too.
I’ve been in the development trenches long enough to see the tides shift. Gone are the days when a developer’s worth was measured by how many lines of code they could write in a day.
The game’s changed.
Just like we no longer write in binary or feed punch cards into machines, we might be entering an era where looking at code is as niche and unnecessary as debugging in 1s and 0s. Generative AI can now spit out full Shopify sections, backend flows, and database queries in seconds. The question isn’t how to write code, it’s whether we need to be looking at it at all.
But if that’s the direction we’re heading, something else has to take its place.
And that’s where the QA engineer comes in.
You need someone who can spot the weak spots, test the edge cases, and push these tools to perform better. Not just more.
Code quality matters less when code is free
Most agencies still treat QA like a luxury. Something you squeeze in at the end of a build, if there’s still time (and budget) left.
But when your developers are moving faster than ever, thanks to Copilot, GPT, or a few years of component reuse, who’s making sure it all actually works? That nothing’s broken in the footer after a homepage tweak? That checkout logic still flows when someone “just moves one thing”?
Here’s the truth: If you're building faster, you need to be testing faster too.
QA engineers as the new glue
There’s a new kind of role emerging, not just testers, and definitely not just pixel-perfect checkers. I’m seeing more people step into that middle ground between code and strategy. People who understand the systems, embrace AI tools, and know enough about development to spot what others miss.
They:
Write automated tests that sweep the site on every deploy
Click through flows like a customer, but with a developer’s eye
Catch weird bugs that AI-generated code introduces without warning
Standardize components across projects so teams can stop firefighting
And the biggest win? They make everyone else faster. When you're not constantly fixing silly mistakes or reverting broken features, you can actually ship.
AI hasn’t killed the dev, but it is changing what we value
Developers are still essential. But what we expect from them is changing.
It’s no longer enough to write code. You have to think critically. Improve performance. Collaborate across teams. Ship faster and smarter.
That’s why I’m seeing more teams lean into hybrid roles. Folks who use AI for the heavy lifting, and spend the time they’ve saved making things better: improving an API call, reducing page load times, tightening up extensions.
So... do you need a QA engineer?
Maybe. But you probably won’t call them that.
Because let’s be honest, “QA Engineer” doesn’t really appear on job boards, and it rarely shows up in org charts. But the embodiment of that role, that’s what growing agencies and tech-forward brands actually need.
You need someone who can:
Embrace AI, but not blindly
Act as a second brain across your projects
Test thoroughly, fix quickly, and improve quietly
Keep your team moving, without letting quality slip
You need someone who can play in the space between dev, product, and operations.
Call them whatever you want. Just know this: if your team is shipping faster than ever, the glue that holds it all together isn’t more code. It’s someone who knows where the cracks form, and patches them before they cost you.