The following article is based on testing jobs salary research by Deimantas Liubertas and Kristina Pečiukonytė – they provided a comprehensive video overview of the results including comparisons of averages between roles, geographies/cities, year-to-year trends, qualitative feedback, and more. All in all, it is a great initiative!

However, as I like to play with data myself, Deimantas kindly shared anonymized data with me, so I could draw some charts myself. Or chart – a single one. I dropped all the data (leaving out two data points that were above 10k, and fixing/removing 2-3 anomalies) into a scatter plot, added some colors, some (polynomial) trend lines (so it got similar to atom energy levels diagram), and voila:

Interns. Not a lot of data points, but a salary of ~1000 Eur/month, and 0-1 years of experience feels accurate (as being stuck in an internship for 2 years or with 2 years of experience would sound wrong). Overall, it feels like most companies do not like to play with internships and hire candidates for junior positions right away.

Juniors. The trend is going from ~1500 to ~2500 Eur/month from 0 to 2 years of experience. Interestingly, there are two data points with 3 years of experience that turn the trend down. From my personal experience, we tend to question Juniors when they arrive at 2 years of experience whether they are ready for promotion to Mid role already, and if not yet, why. As always, it depends on the context/environment, but 2 years feels like the right time to raise that question (if it has not been raised already).

Mids. The most Mid data points are between 1-5 years of experience, even though there are Mid data points all across the full 0-10+ interval. The polynomial trend line arrives from ~2200-2500 Eur/month on 0-1 year to nearly ~4000 Eur/month at 6-7 years of experience and goes along with the ~4000 Eur/month mark into 10+ years, and that feels more or less like a market standard for experienced Mid QA specialists (even though there are several data points above that mark – there always are – and there are data points at ~6500-7000 Eur/month where, probably, title does not matter that much as skill, quality, value, etc.) Data show that a lot of Mid specialists with 3-5 years of experience are valued more in the market than most Mid QAs with 10+ years of experience (and maybe that is a good sign how 3-5 years of proper upskilling beats decade(s) in “comfort zone”).

Seniors. Senior interval starts at 3 years of experience (with a single data point with 3 years of experience) showing that promotions to Senior positions happen no earlier than around 3-4 years of experience. The trend line starts at ~4400 Eur/month and slowly goes to ~5000 Eur/month as careers progress. However, data points are really scattered both ways and that may reflect the fact (from qualitative feedback) that Senior QA skills, quality, value, and expectations differ a lot between different companies. Therefore, IMO the range of ~5000-6000 Eur/month would represent the subset of strong and experienced Senior QA specialists more accurately.

Also, Senior Contractors stand out from the charts as experienced ones can progress to close to or greater than 10k Eur/month salaries.

Lead (Principal, Staff roles, “middle management”). Interval starts at 4 years of experience (with a single data point with 4 years of experience) showing that promotions to Lead roles happen no earlier than around 4-5 years of experience. The trend line starts at ~4500 Eur/month and rises towards ~6000 Eur/month at 10+ years of experience, but that is not the limit as there are ~10 data points above 6000 Eur/month. Compared to the Senior one, the Lead trend line is a bit above and more steep (yet it comes with a price, muahaha…)

Manager (Directive, Head of QA/Testing roles, Lead of Leads). Interval starts at 6 years of experience (with a single data point with 6 years of experience, and others starting at 9 years of experience) showing that promotions to Manager roles typically happen no earlier than around 8-9 years of experience (that was the case in my personal experience as well). The trend line does not say much as data points are highly scattered saying “it depends”.

Note: as all the 10+ years of experience data points were added at exactly 10 years of experience (due to insufficient data accuracy) that may have resulted in more steep trend lines, especially, closer to the 9-10 interval.

As we briefly discussed with Deimantas, there are still some unanswered questions on data quality, accuracy, anomalies, trust, and some other things, but they will most likely always be there. However, overall trends look logical and pass sanity checks (also, aligns pretty well with salary data about Western Europe from PractiTest State of Testing report (slide 9)), so we hope it brings some insight about the Lithuanian Testing Jobs market as well as about your (as a testing specialist) position in it.