QA & Testing

Test automation build-out for a single product: $20K–60K depending on stack complexity. Embedded QA engineer (full-time equivalent) on Managed Retainer: $5K–13K/month at our rates. Pre-launch QA sprint: $10K–30K. Performance/load testing engagement: $8K–25K. Accessibility audit: $5K–15K. We give a fixed-scope proposal within 7 days of discovery — actual price, not estimate range.

Both, almost always. Automated tests handle regression — the things that should never break again. Manual testing handles judgment — exploratory testing, usability sanity checks, the edge cases an engineer didn't think to write a test for. Teams that go all-automation miss bugs that need human intuition. Teams that go all-manual ship slower and miss regressions. The right ratio depends on your release cadence, but every mature quality function has both.

The testing pyramid is a model for distributing tests by type. Lots of fast unit tests at the base (testing single functions). Fewer integration tests in the middle (testing how pieces fit together). A small number of end-to-end tests at the top (testing full user flows). Pyramids work because unit tests are fast and cheap, E2E tests are slow and brittle, and balance prevents both extremes. We design a pyramid that fits your stack and team — not the textbook ideal that nobody actually runs.

Yes. Greenfield automation framework build-outs are a meaningful portion of our work. Playwright is our default for new web automation projects (faster, more reliable than Selenium, modern API). Cypress for teams that prefer it. Appium or platform-native frameworks for mobile. We wire everything into your existing CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI), set up proper reporting and flake handling from day one, and document the framework so your team can extend it.

Yes. k6 is our default for modern API and web load testing (developer-friendly, JavaScript-based, integrates with CI). JMeter for teams that already use it. Gatling for high-throughput scenarios. We design test scenarios that match real user behavior (not synthetic happy-path traffic), establish performance budgets, identify bottlenecks, and produce reports that give engineering and leadership a clear picture of system limits.

We handle the testing layer of security — OWASP Top 10 vulnerability checks, dependency vulnerability scanning, authentication and authorization testing, input validation testing, and the security regression suite that prevents previously-patched vulnerabilities from coming back. For penetration testing or full security audits, we partner with specialized security firms — we don't pretend to replace dedicated pen testers.

Yes. Automated accessibility testing with axe-core and Pa11y integrated into CI catches the regressions. Manual accessibility QA — keyboard navigation, screen reader testing with VoiceOver and NVDA, color contrast review, focus management — catches what automation misses. We target WCAG 2.1 AA as the baseline, AAA for audiences that require it. Accessibility is the right thing to do and reduces ADA legal exposure.

Test maintenance is where most automation suites die. We engineer suites to be stable from the start — proper waits instead of arbitrary timeouts, deterministic test data, isolated test runs, and the page-object or screen-object patterns that keep selectors maintainable. Flaky tests get diagnosed and either fixed or removed — never tolerated, because tolerated flakes train teams to ignore real failures. Maintenance hours are part of every retainer.

Yes — carefully. Legacy code without tests is often legacy code that resists testing because the architecture wasn't designed for it. We start with characterization tests (locking in current behavior, even if it's buggy) before refactoring, then add proper unit and integration coverage as the code evolves. For high-risk untested legacy systems, end-to-end tests provide a regression net while incremental refactoring makes the code testable underneath.