# Hire an SQA Engineer | $15–35/hr

> Hire a dedicated SQA engineer for $15–35 per hour. Test automation, regression suites, and CI quality gates from a vetted Sentient Arc engineer, remote.

An embedded SQA engineer from Sentient Arc runs $15–35 per hour, depending on project and seniority. Test automation, regression coverage, and CI quality gates, starting with a free consultation.

## Rate & engagement
- **Rate:** $15–35/hr
- **Engagement:** Part-time or full-time
- **Start:** Within 1 week
- **Overlap:** 4+ hrs your timezone

## Quality debt is invisible until launch week
Teams without a quality owner discover their bugs in production, at the exact moment they are most expensive. Developers testing their own work see what they built, not what the user will do to it.

A dedicated SQA engineer makes failure cheap. Regressions get caught in CI in minutes, edge cases get hunted deliberately, and "it works on my machine" stops being the release bar.

## Automation first, judgment always
We automate the repeatable: regression suites in Playwright or Cypress run on every pull request, API contracts get tested at the boundary, and flaky tests get fixed, not retried into silence.

The human part stays human. Exploratory sessions, release-risk assessment, and bug reports precise enough to fix without a meeting: severity, steps, evidence, and the exact build.

## What they own
- **Test automation**: End-to-end and API suites built in Playwright, Cypress, or Appium and wired into CI from day one.
- **Regression coverage**: A maintained suite that guards the critical paths, so refactors and releases stop being gambles.
- **Exploratory testing**: Deliberate hunting through edge cases, device matrices, and hostile inputs automation misses.
- **Quality gates & reporting**: CI gates with meaningful thresholds and release sign-off backed by evidence, not optimism.

## Stack
- **Automation:** Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Appium
- **Practice:** Regression suites, API testing, Load testing, Exploratory testing
- **Process:** CI quality gates, Bug triage, Test plans, Release sign-off

## FAQ
**How much does it cost to hire an SQA engineer?**

Expect $15–35 per hour for a dedicated SQA engineer, depending on scope and seniority. A free consultation maps your current quality gaps first.

**Can an SQA engineer set up test automation from scratch?**

Yes. Standing up a first regression suite, wiring it into CI, and defining the quality gates is the most common starting engagement for teams that have been testing manually.

**Do you test web, mobile, and APIs?**

All three: web through Playwright or Cypress, mobile through Appium and device labs, and APIs at the contract level, with load testing where traffic warrants it.

**Is a dedicated QA engineer worth it for a small team?**

Usually earlier than teams expect. Once bugs start reaching users faster than you catch them, a part-time SQA engineer at hourly rates costs less than the reputation repair.

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Canonical page: https://www.sentientarc.com/hire/sqa-engineer