The Lone Tester: Surviving and Thriving as The First QA Hire

I've been the "first QA" in three different ways over the course of my career: as an advisor to a tiny startup that ultimately didn't make it, as the first quality hire in the satellite office of a company with an established QA team elsewhere, and as a solo tester on project-based work with a crowd-testing company.

Each experience taught me different things about what it takes to succeed when you're the first and only tester. The most interesting thing I learned in all of those experiences? While I was hired to improve quality, my biggest job often ended up being driving organizational change.

I still remember early in my work with the startup I mentioned... In early chats with my friend, he focused on the need for the me to help improve their automated test coverage in order to make releases less stressful. But in meeting and speaking with each member of the 6-person team, I realized that everyone else had a different understanding of what “quality” meant and different ideas on the best ways to get there. Before I could begin to work with them on improving their testing practices, I had to align six different mental models about what quality meant for their product and how to build quality in to their processes.

The Expectation Gap

I realized early on in my time with that startup that the team needed more support than I could offer while still maintaining my full-time role. What had started as a request for help with test automation quickly revealed itself as something much larger.

After two weeks I had an honest conversation with my friend. We agreed that what they needed wasn't just a part-time advisor on automation, but someone who could help reshape their entire approach to quality. It was beyond the scope of what I could provide as a side project.

But this short experience really hit something home for me: sometimes what companies think they need ("more test automation") won’t solve the deeper challenges they’re really facing. At this startup, no amount of automated testing would have addressed the constantly shifting priorities and testability challenges that were resulting in quality breaking down across their product dev lifecycle. (And if you're reading this, sorry friend! I write this all with love 😅)

This gap between what a company thinks it needs versus what it actually needs can set many first QA hires up for failure. So if you're considering stepping into a role where you'll be a solo QA, read on for tips on how to spot these gaps early (and turn them into opportunities!)

The Early Days: Mapping the Territory

When you join a team or project as the lone tester who is accountable for The Quality of Everything (tm), one of your first jobs is to build a mental model of what "everything" actually is and where things currently stand.

Talk to everyone (not just engineers)

At the startup, I spoke with:

• My friend for the executive view on business priorities and quality
• Developers for their testing practices and technical quality challenges
• The product manager for how requirements were defined and validated
• CX and Sales for how quality issues were affecting customers in the real world

Before each discussion, I set a goal to understand their perspective on “quality”. I asked each of them questions like:

• "What makes releases terrifying for you personally?"
• "Where do you think quality breaks down in our current process?"
• "If you could fix just one thing about how we build software, what would it be?"

The truth surfaced really quickly: leadership thought developers weren't testing well enough, while developers couldn't test effectively given how requirements kept shifting after they'd started building. Quality was breaking down at early in the product ideation and definition phase.

When I started in the Dropbox NYC office (pre-panini, when I worked in offices full time 🫠), I found something different. The teams I worked with had solid quality practices on paper (copied from headquarters), but had adapted them in ad-hoc ways that weren't working. They didn't need new quality practices; they needed to understand why the existing ones mattered, and how to make them work for them.

Experience how work really happens

Reading process docs and talking to people will help you understand the official process, but you need to experience how work actually happens day-to-day. This distinction is something John Cutler explored on his blog and when I came across it, it clicked immediately since much of the work quality leaders do involves navigating precisely these gaps.

So, to really see how things work, jump into the flow of actual work as it moves from idea to production and contribute where you can:

• Partner on feature from concept to release, offering testing perspective throughout
• Actively participate in planning meetings, asking questions about quality risks early
• Investigate recent incidents and share recommendations with the team, bringing your testing mindset to root cause analysis

At the startup, on my third day in I jumped into their sprint planning and began asking questions about acceptance criteria. Even though I didn’t have much product context, this simple step helped me show them that they didn’t have a shared understanding of what they were building. By working alongside the team, I was able to suggest small, immediate improvements rather than just documenting problems.

Share your findings and invite action

After you've talked to everyone and seen how work actually happens, you'll have a clear picture of where quality is breaking down. Sharing these insights thoughtfully will help the team much more receptive to your recommendations.

In my early days at Dropbox NYC, I made the rookie mistake of recommending that a team make some pretty significant changes to their release testing process because, in my professional opinion, it would fix a thing that was obviously not working (obvious to me, at least). Maybe unsurprisingly, that didn't go over well. A couple of folks got defensive and my carefully laid plan to help was politely acknowledged but never really got any traction with the team.

I’ve since learned that language matters enormously. Now I focus on:

• Highlighting patterns rather than individual mistakes ("I noticed we're consistently missing edge cases in this type of feature")
• Connecting quality issues directly to business outcomes ("These UI inconsistencies are causing a 15% drop-off in our sign-up flow")
• Suggesting concrete, prioritized next steps that feel achievable ("Here is a small change we could make this sprint that would have a noticeable impact")

This approach of meeting teams where they are and organizing around shared goals rather than problems has transformed how my teams and I work together. At the startup, I saw this play out in miniature when I framed testing challenges in terms of “wasted engineering hours” rather than "bad quality practices" everyone became much more interested in collaborating on real solutions.

From Outsider to Insider: Building Credibility

When you join a team as their first tester, you're in a bit of an odd position because you need trust to create change, but you also need to show improvements (through change 🙃) to build trust. All while everyone's watching to see if you're one of “the good QA’s” (yes, I’ve actually been told that before) or if you’re going to do a lot of work that doesn’t have any measurable impact on things that matter.

Balance quick wins with systemic changes

I've learned it's best to work on two different fronts at the same time:

1. Quick, visible improvements that help you deliver on the promise of your shiny, new QA role
2. Deeper changes that address the (sometimes complex) root problems over time

At the startup, despite my short tenure, I was able to create a simple pre-release checklist that captured steps the team was already doing mentally but had never documented. This immediately reduced the anxiety around releases by making implicit knowledge explicit. I intentionally did this because it was easy for me to put together quickly and immediately useful, which helped build trust.

At Dropbox NYC, I took a different approach. I joined my first SEV review - a meeting where we analyze what went wrong during a production incident and how to prevent it in the future - and listened as the presenting engineer glossed over how test data hadn't matched real-world conditions. In the open discussion afterwards, I brought attention to the ways that our test data didn't match production patterns and suggested a concrete way to fix it. This gave us specific places to focus on rather than hand-wavy "we need more testing" comments.

Be a quality coach, not the quality police

The fastest way to fail as a solo QA is to position yourself as the quality police. Not just because it's not good practice, but also because you can't possibly be effective at doing that alone! Your best bet is to find ways to partner with your teams where you guide the quality strategy but everyone actively contributes to building quality.

Think of it as being the team's quality coach - part of your job is to help each member level up their testing skills while you maintain ultimate accountability for the quality outcomes yourself. This approach scales in a way that policing never could (and you’ll probably have more fun working this way, too!)

Teach the team to fish

When joining a new team as their only tester, the most valuable contribution you can make will be helping the entire team develop quality-minded habits that stick around even when aren’t there. Some effective approaches I've used:

• Pair with team members in different contexts: sit with developers as they write unit tests, invite the team to observe your exploratory testing sessions, join product and design during ideation to talk through edge cases, have PMs shadow your test planning. Each of these pairings teaches different quality skills.
• Develop testing tools and templates others can use independently: checklists, test data generators, simple frameworks - anything that makes it super easy for the team to maintain good testing practices.
• Document your testing knowledge in accessible places: share testing heuristics, listing common risk areas, or even just your mental model of how you approach testing different parts of the system.
• Celebrate quality wins: recognize engineers who write testable code, PMs who write clear acceptance criteria, designers who consider edge cases in their mockups, and folks who find the most bugs (but, like, obvs: don’t use this as a performance metric - using bug counts that way creates all kinds of bad incentives).

At Dropbox, I used to run “scenario gathering” sessions with my teams where we’d review user stories for new features and talk about the scenarios - or paths - for each. It was a great way to build shared knowledge about edge cases and prevent bugs before any code is ever written. I remember one particularly skeptical engineer who really didn’t like having another meeting show up on his calendar came to me a few weeks after that first session. He’d applied that thinking to a new feature he was building and was excited that he'd pointed out three edge case bugs in a requirements review with another team’s PM. He'd become an advocate for the approach without me having to ask.

Navigating Resistance and Isolation

Even with quick wins and a coaching mindset, you're probably going to face resistance at some point. Quality changes are hard and often require that teams slow down at first to speed up later. That can be a tough sell on teams that like to move fast and break things.

Spotting resistance to change

When folks are resistant to the progress you’re working to make, it's rarely as direct as someone saying "we don't value quality." Instead, you might notice these subtle signals:

• Your suggestions get enthusiastic nods in meetings but never actually make it past that
• You find yourself invited to fewer planning discussions
• Certain teams knowingly route around your processes to “ship faster”
• The phrase "we'll do that next time" becomes eerily familiar…

When you do run into this, I recommend addressing it upfront and with curiosity. This can help you understand the constraints they may be working under and how to best address the situation. At Dropbox, I realized that one team’s bug triage meetings were becoming a bottleneck that they resented. Rather than forcing folks to continue attending, we created a simple prioritization framework that they could apply themselves, and decided to only call meetings for the truly ambiguous issues. Bugs continued to get triaged with much less overhead and by a happier team.

Finding community

I think it’s important to also acknowledge that being the first QA can feel very isolating. Having no peers who really get the unique challenges you’re facing can be tough, especially when you're pushing for changes that might not always be welcomed with open arms.

So, I highly recommend that you are intentional about getting perspectives from outside your company:

• Join testing communities (like Ministry of Testing or The Test Tribe)
• Connect with other quality professionals at similar companies (Reach out on LinkedIn. What’s the worst that could happen?)
• Attend testing conferences and local meetups
• Find a mentor who's been in your position before

A while back, a friend reached out when she became the first tester at her company (we had previously worked in CX together). She later told me that our regular chats became a lifeline for her, and I found that mentoring someone through the same challenges I'd faced helped me articulate solutions I'd developed intuitively. Being that sounding board for her reminded me how important it is to get an outside perspective when you're trying to change a company's quality culture from the inside. Sometimes just hearing "yes, that's normal" from someone who's been there makes all the difference between feeling like you're failing versus recognizing you're tackling genuinely hard problems.

Practical Strategies That Work

Every time I've been the first tester somewhere new, I've found myself returning to these principles again and again. While the specific tactics might change based on your situation these have consistently helped me build credibility and drive meaningful quality improvements.

1. Start with influence, not processes

At the startup, I didn't begin by creating some grand QA process for their tiny team. I started by asking a simple question during planning: "How will we know this feature is working correctly?" This sparked conversations about acceptance criteria that helped clarify requirements before coding began. The value was immediate without any heavy process changes.

Join with the intention of being helpful and curious over being right. Start with questions and observations that help the team think differently about quality. Build relationships and credibility before you try to change how people work.

2. Connect quality to business outcomes

The number of bugs found or tests written rarely matter to leadership or customers. What does matter? Things like:

• Fewer production incidents: Your on-call rotation becomes boring (in the best possible way)
• Lower maintenance burden: Engineers spend time adding value instead of fixing old code
• Reduced change failure rate: Fewer rollbacks means your roadmap stops getting derailed
• Fewer customer-reported issues: Better reviews, higher retention, less support overhead
• Greater release confidence: It's amazing when deployment days feel routine

Whatever metrics you choose, make sure they directly connect to what your stakeholders care about. This connection key to being seen as a valued strategic partner who helps your teams win.

3. Translate between perspectives

Quality sits at the intersection of technical needs, business goals, and user experience - leverage that. Help engineers understand the business impact of technical decisions, help product managers see the quality implications of feature tradeoffs, and channel these insights into more meaningful testing that addresses real risks.

4. Make quality work visible

It’s easy for quality work to seem invisible when things are going well and you’ll need to actively look for ways to counter this. Some ways I’ve done this in the past?

• Sharing dashboards that show quality trends over time
• Celebrating quality wins in team meetings
• Telling stories about bugs that never reached customers
• Visualizing quality debt the same way teams visualize technical debt

Your team can’t value the quality work you’re doing if they don’t even know it’s happening.

5. Build quality partners across the organization

No man is an island and all that. Build a network of quality advocates throughout the organization who can advocate for quality when you aren’t in the room. Look for the quiet engineer who asks "but what if..." questions, the designer who brings up accessibility without prompting, or the PM who tracks customer complaints obsessively.

And look outside of EPD, too. You'll find great partners in CX, Sales, and other orgs - don't overlook them just because they don't write code. Some of my most powerful quality allies have been support team members who could articulate exactly how technical issues translated to real customer pain.

The Long Game

Being your company's first QA hire is equal parts challenging and opportunity. You'll face resistance, isolation, and the pressure of creating something from nothing. It can feel scary and isolating. But, you also have the rare and exciting opportunity to shape what quality means for an entire organization.

Each time I’ve been the lone tester I used different approaches, but the fundamental challenge was always the same: helping teams see quality as something they build together, not something one person provides.

You can do this. And if you play it right, you might find that it becomes the most rewarding work of your career.