The process of ensuring software meets requirements and quality standards through planning, testing, and continuous improvement.
Quality assurance (QA) aims to prevent defects, not just find them. It covers defining standards, reviewing requirements and designs, setting up testing strategies, and improving development processes. Quality control and testing are parts of QA focused on checking the actual product.
Testing happens at many levels: unit tests for individual functions, integration tests for components working together, end-to-end tests that simulate real user journeys, plus performance, security, accessibility, and usability testing. Much of this is automated and runs in CI/CD pipelines, while exploratory manual testing still catches issues automation misses. QA engineers and software development engineers in test are distinct career paths. Modern teams increasingly treat quality as everyone's responsibility rather than a final gate.
An iterative approach to software development that delivers work in small increments and adapts to feedback instead of following a fixed upfront plan.
CI/CDContinuous Integration and Continuous Delivery or Deployment: practices that automatically build, test, and release code changes.
Code ReviewThe practice of having other developers examine code changes before they are merged, to catch bugs and keep quality consistent.
Integration TestingTesting that checks whether different parts of a software system, such as services, databases, and APIs, work correctly together.
Model EvaluationThe process of testing an AI model against defined tasks and criteria to measure how accurate, reliable, and safe it is.
Software Development Life CycleThe structured series of stages software goes through, from planning and design to building, testing, release, and maintenance.
Unit TestingTesting individual pieces of code, such as functions or classes, in isolation to confirm they behave as expected.
Waterfall ModelA sequential software development approach in which each phase, from requirements to maintenance, is completed before the next begins.
A step-by-step software engineering roadmap with skills, milestones and realistic timelines, plus how to land your first developer role with or without a degree.
A month-by-month plan to learn to code for free with freeCodeCamp, The Odin Project, CS50x and MDN, plus projects that keep you accountable.
Software engineer and software developer usually describe the same job in the US. Here is how employers actually use the titles, what can differ and how to choose which one to apply for.