# Modern QA Course

> What QA engineers actually need to know in 2026. Free, opinionated, updated continuously. A free 26-module QA engineering curriculum by Yuri Syuganov: AI-augmented testing, technical foundations, and professional skills.

## Course

- [Course overview](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/QA_ENGINEER_SKILLS_2026): the master guide — what QA engineers actually need to know, and in what order
- [01 Agent Skills for Browser Automation](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/01-agent-skills-browser-automation): Teach an AI coding agent to drive a real browser. The SKILL.md format, the Playwright CLI, first-party Test Agents, and the token economics that made skills beat MCP.
- [02 AI-Augmented Test Design](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/02-ai-augmented-test-design): Stop writing every test by hand. Direct AI like an editor-in-chief — prompt, generate, curate — without ever shipping a test you don't understand.
- [03 Agentic Testing Architectures](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/03-agentic-testing-architectures): Build testing agents that observe, reason, act, and evaluate on their own — with the guardrails that keep autonomy from becoming chaos.
- [04 API & Contract Testing with AI](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/04-api-contract-testing-with-ai): Turn OpenAPI schemas into exhaustive test suites, wire Pact contracts between services, and let semantic fuzzers hunt the bugs random ones miss.
- [05 Performance & Chaos Engineering](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/05-performance-and-chaos-engineering): Break things on purpose, before production does it for you. Load tests that mirror reality and chaos experiments you can defend to management.
- [06 Observability-Driven Testing](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/06-observability-driven-testing): The deploy is not the finish line. Use logs, traces, metrics, canaries, and feature flags to keep testing after release — where it counts most.
- [07 Security Testing for AI Apps](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/07-security-testing-for-ai-apps): Your AI features are an attack surface. Learn to break them before someone else does — from prompt injection to retrieval poisoning, with hands-on labs.
- [08 Infrastructure as Code Testing](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/08-infrastructure-as-code-testing): Infrastructure is code now — which means it can be tested before it becomes a 3 a.m. incident. Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, and policy-as-code.
- [09 Mobile & Cross-Platform Testing](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/09-mobile-and-cross-platform-testing): 24,000 device models, two ecosystems, one strategy. Device farms, cross-platform frameworks, and the mobile-only failure modes desktop never taught you.
- [10 Visual & Accessibility Testing](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/10-visual-and-accessibility-testing): Pixels and people: catch the regressions users see and the barriers some users can't get past — with AI triage that kills screenshot noise.
- [11 Manual Testing Fundamentals](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/11-manual-testing-fundamentals): Before automation, there is thinking. Test design, exploratory testing, and bug reports that get fixed — the bedrock the rest of QA stands on.
- [12 Programming for QA](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/12-programming-for-qa): Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript taught side by side — every concept in all three languages, every example pulled from real QA work.
- [13 Browser Automation with Playwright](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/13-browser-automation-with-playwright): From your first locator to a production framework the whole team trusts — auto-waiting, fixtures, network mocking, and the end of fragile tests.
- [14 API Testing Fundamentals](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/14-api-testing-fundamentals): From clicking Send in Postman to API suites running in CI — REST, GraphQL, and gRPC, with the HTTP fundamentals that make it all make sense.
- [15 SQL & Database Testing](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/15-sql-and-database-testing): The bugs live in the data. From your first SELECT to migration testing, NoSQL, and GDPR-compliant masking — with exercises all the way.
- [16 CI/CD Pipelines](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/16-cicd-pipelines): From commit to confidence: pipelines where tests gate what matters, run in parallel, and tell developers the truth fast.
- [17 Git & Version Control](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/17-git-and-version-control): Beyond push and pull: branching strategies, conflict resolution without fear, bisecting your way to the guilty commit, and PR reviews that matter.
- [18 Test Management Tools](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/18-test-management-tools): Make quality visible. Jira and TestRail workflows, 50+ ready JQL queries, dashboards executives actually read, and traceability that holds up.
- [19 Linux & Command Line](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/19-linux-and-command-line): When production breaks, the answer is in a log file on a server somewhere. grep, curl, jq, Bash, and Docker — your survival kit, with 100 exercises.
- [20 Agile & Scrum](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/20-agile-and-scrum): Quality in every sprint, not a phase at the end. Sprint planning, the definition of done, three amigos, and metrics that fit two-week cycles.
- [21 Communication & Stakeholder Management](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/21-communication-and-stakeholder-management): The most technically brilliant QA engineer is ineffective if nobody listens. Bug diplomacy, blocking a release, and talking to executives.
- [22 Test Strategy & Quality Metrics](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/22-test-strategy-and-quality-metrics): Move from running tests to leading quality: strategy aligned with business goals, automation ROI you can defend, and metrics that drive decisions.
- [23 QA Leadership & Mentoring](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/23-qa-leadership-and-mentoring): Multiply your impact: build teams, grow a quality-first culture, mentor the next generation, and lead from the IC or the management track alike.
- [24 Technical Writing for QA](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/24-technical-writing-for-qa): Documents that drive action: test plans people read, bug reports that get fixed, RCAs that prevent repeats, and docs that outlive team turnover.
- [25 Interview Preparation & Career](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/25-interview-preparation-and-career): Everything in the series, deployed into the interviews that decide your career — STAR stories, live exercises, negotiation scripts, first 90 days.
- [26 Testing Like a Senior](https://modernqacourse.com/docs/en/26-testing-like-a-senior): The QA field manual: the entire career arc, from your first two weeks on the job to strategic leadership, told through patterns and anti-patterns.

## Books

- [Books](https://modernqacourse.com/books): the same material — expanded, edited, and typeset — as the 26-book "The Modern QA Engineer Skillset" series on Leanpub

## Author

Yuri Syuganov:
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/syuganov)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/earlyadopter)
- [Leanpub](https://leanpub.com/building-agentic-systems)
- [AI to Be Aware Of](https://ai-to-be-aware-of.com)
- [Early Adopter Labs](https://earlyadopterlabs.com)