The Junior QA / Software Tester Professional Certificate is an entry-level program designed to help you launch a career in software quality assurance. Software testing is a critical part of modern software development, creating opportunities for professionals who enjoy problem solving, attention to detail, and improving product quality. Targeted at career switchers and beginners, this program develops job-ready skills in software development life cycle (SDLC) methodologies, defect management, API validation, and troubleshooting. You will gain hands-on experience with industry-standard tools, including Jira and Zephyr, Azure DevOps, Visual Studio Code, and Playwright. The curriculum guides you from testing principles to technical execution. Participants map testing activities to Agile and Scrum frameworks, executing smoke and regression tests. They then move to backend testing, writing SQL queries for data validation, and conducting load testing using Apache JMeter. The program covers Generative AI for intelligent test design and defect analysis. You will complete a career development course on resume optimization, GitHub portfolio creation, and interview preparation to help you showcase QA skills during the job search. Graduates are prepared for roles such as Junior QA Tester, Software Tester, QA Analyst, Quality Assurance Engineer, and Manual Tester. Some exercises may require paid tool tiers.
Applied Learning Project
This program features hands-on, portfolio-ready projects mirroring a Junior QA Tester's responsibilities, providing evidence of job-readiness to employers.
QA Methodology & Scrum Planning: Set up an Agile workspace in Jira, map features to test coverage, and create a traceability matrix to align QA activities with sprint goals.
Manual Execution & Bug Reporting: Execute smoke and regression suites, conduct exploratory testing to find user friction, and log comprehensive, reproducible defect reports.
Test Design & Quality Dashboards: Write risk-based test cases, provision synthetic data using AI, and visualize quality metrics like pass-rate and defect density using Excel and Zephyr.
Automated Validation & AI Testing: Script UI tests with Playwright, write SQL for database validation, and use Generative AI to detect defect hot-spots.
Capstone Project: Build a showcase-ready portfolio artifact that covers an end-to-end testing cycle on a mock app, from test planning to reporting.
