Rethinking Technical Expertise in QA

Being technical isn’t just about code - it’s about understanding systems, making informed trade-offs, and shaping quality in complex environments.

There is often an ask in engineering teams for people to be more technical. I see this the most with QA roles. But it often boils down to one thing: more automated testing.

The general perception is that automation is fast, modern, and accelerates value delivery. While manual testing is slow, outdated and a bottleneck.

Put another way: manual = bad, automation = good.

But is that what “being technical” means or is it just a very narrow view of technical expertise?

Being technical is more than just code

For me, being technical is not just about automation or the ability to write code. It’s about understanding the technical details of the systems we work in and using that knowledge to design, develop, and solve practical problems.

It means:

• Understanding how the system behaves, where risks emerge, and how to influence those behaviours.

• Using feedback to improve how we deliver value.

• Making informed trade-offs—not just automating for the sake of it.

And because we work in a socio-technical system…