Boolean search string for QA Engineer
Copy-paste strings to source QA Engineer candidates, plus the title synonyms, skills and exclusions they are built from. Adapt the terms to your market before running them.
LinkedIn search
("qa engineer" OR "quality assurance engineer" OR "test engineer" OR sdet OR "test automation engineer") AND "test automation" AND "api testing" AND "test cases" AND (selenium OR cypress OR playwright OR appium OR postman OR jira OR sql OR javascript OR python OR ci/cd OR jenkins OR docker OR "performance testing" OR k6) NOT (recruiter OR staffing OR intern OR student)Paste into the LinkedIn people-search box. LinkedIn supports AND, OR, NOT and quoted phrases.
Google X-ray
site:linkedin.com/in ("qa engineer" OR "quality assurance engineer" OR "test engineer" OR sdet OR "test automation engineer") "test automation" "api testing" "test cases" (selenium OR cypress OR playwright OR appium OR postman OR jira OR sql OR javascript OR python OR ci/cd OR jenkins OR docker OR "performance testing" OR k6) -recruiter -staffing -intern -studentPaste into Google. It searches public LinkedIn profiles without LinkedIn Recruiter — add a location in quotes to narrow it.
Terms behind the QA Engineer string
| Job titles | qa engineer · quality assurance engineer · test engineer · sdet · test automation engineer |
|---|---|
| Core skills | test automation · api testing · test cases · selenium · cypress · playwright · appium · postman · jira · sql · javascript · python |
| Nice to have | ci/cd · jenkins · docker · performance testing · k6 |
| Excluded | recruiter · staffing · intern · student |
Sourcing notes
- Start broad, then narrow. If a string returns under ~20 profiles, drop the nice-to-have group before you drop titles.
- Exclusions cut noise but also cut real candidates — check a few excluded profiles before trusting a NOT clause.
- Titles vary by company size: what reads as senior at a startup can be mid-level at an enterprise. Read the profile, not the label.
Build a custom Boolean string → · Interview scorecard for a QA Engineer →
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a QA engineer and an SDET when hiring?
The titles overlap differently at every company. Decide what fraction of the role is exploratory testing and risk judgment versus building and maintaining automation infrastructure, then weight the interview to match. Hiring an automation-heavy profile into a mostly exploratory role is a common and expensive mismatch.
How do I test QA skills in an interview without a take-home?
Give them a small live feature or a written spec and ask what they would test first, what they would leave out, and why. Then read a real bug report they wrote and judge it on reproducibility alone. Both fit inside thirty minutes.
What should a QA engineer scorecard weight most?
Coverage reasoning and defect report quality usually carry the most weight, because they determine whether the rest of the work has value at all. Set the weights before interviewing and record the evidence behind each score. Verdict applies the same approach to CV screening, tying every score to a cited line from the document.
When the stakes are a real hire, use evidence
These tools are quick heuristics. Verdict reads the CV against your job description and scores six dimensions with verbatim quotes as evidence — a hiring document you can defend.