At Plank, we’re committed to creating the next generation of QA engineers who are as obsessed with software quality as we are.
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What is the Plank QA Fellowship?
Each fellowship cohort learns and collaborates closely as a team, working in-person from one of our Plank centers, under the direct supervision and mentorship of Plank’s senior engineers throughout the the fellowship
All selected fellows get paid an attractive monthly salary for the duration of the fellowship.
The first 2 months of the fellowship involves intensive training in the cutting-edge languages, frameworks, services, and methodologies that are required to succeed in the real world
The intensive training period is followed by 10 months of working directly with Plank’s commercial partners on real world projects - you will interact with senior executives and industry leaders from around the world, and get a front row seat to how fast growing companies build amazing products.
At the end of the fellowship, fellows who have successfully completed the 1 year fellowship will be invited to join Plank as a full-time core team member.
QA Fellowship Timeline
We’ve thoughtfully designed the Plank Fellowship to turbocharge the careers of the best and brightest students around the world.
Build a Strong QA Foundation
- Introduction to Quality Assurance: what QA is, why it matters, and its role in the software development lifecycle.
- Learn the fundamentals of manual testing: test cases, test plans, bug reporting, severity vs priority.
- Understand types of testing: functional, regression, smoke, exploratory, acceptance.
- Practice using bug tracking and collaboration tools (LinearApp).
- Focus on real-world scenarios: testing UI flows, identifying common bugs, and improving product quality.
Fundamentals of Automation & QA Practices
- Introduction to automation in QA: why and when to use automation.
- Understand the difference between manual vs automated testing, and how they complement each other.
- Basics of test automation tools (TBD) – just enough to understand the foundation.
- Hands-on practice with writing simple automated test scripts (smoke and regression tests).
Join as Trainee in First QA Project
- Join a real-world product team to test features under the mentorship of senior QAs and engineers.
- Perform test execution, exploratory testing, and bug triaging.
- Learn how to provide clear and impactful bug reports that help developers fix faster.
- Start understanding how QA adds value in production environments.
Contribute as Core QA Team Member
- Take ownership of feature-level testing end-to-end (requirements review → test case design → execution).
- Perform cross-browser and cross-device testing.
- Learn how to balance manual and automated testing efforts.
- Get exposure to test strategy design: defining test scope, prioritization, and risk-based testing.
- Apply best practices: documentation, reproducibility, and collaboration with Dev/PO/Design.
Developing QA Skills
- Develop skills in test planning, reporting, and communication with stakeholders.
- Learn how to run a scrum from the QA perspective: identifying risks early and ensuring quality gates.
- Write comprehensive documentation: test cases, bug reports, QA checklists.
- Practice design thinking applied to QA: anticipating user problems before they occur.