- The Path 8
- Career paths 9
- The staff level 11
- On par with management 14
- Staff-level people are leaders 15
- Reflective exercises 17
- The People 18
- Getting there 18
- Getting involvement from others 21
- Coaching and facilitation 24
- People problems 25
- Reflective exercises 27
- The Experience 28
- What do Staff-level people actually do? 31
- Staff-level personas 33
- You’re on your own kid 35
- Reflective exercises 37
- The Company 38
- An outreach mindset 38
- What staff-level testers find 40
- The company culture 41
- Organizational position 43
- Organizational power 45
- Reflective exercises 46
- The Beacon 48
Staff-Level Testing Roles
[ A Path for High-Level Testing Contributors ]
This book is 100% completeLast updated on 2026-05-05
You heard about the Manager's Path and about the Staff Engineers Path - let's look into the path for staff-level testing roles
Minimum price
$16.00
$16.00
You pay
Author earns
PDF
EPUB
About
About the Book
This book is written as a guide for aspiring and existing staff-level testing professionals, whether they have the formal title or not. I want to bring forward that a testing staff-level path is indeed “out there”. Often, it’s the nature of the work - a mindset rather than an explicit title.
This book covers and provides reflection into:
- The Staff-level path in general
- A focus on people
- The experience in working at staff-level
- How to read and sense organizations
Author
About the Author
Jesper Ottosen
Jesper primarily leads security, compliance, and testing activities in programs and projects that address the company's license to operate - industry regulations, government legislation, and other contractual requirements. At work, he is praised for the mindset that a challenge is just a doorway to an unknown opportunity.
He has at least seven years of experience as an individual contributor on an advisory level. Jesper has authored two books and multiple leadership resources to help testing professionals advance their careers and develop impactful testing strategies and leadership skills.
Testimonials
Reader Testimonials
Software quality still matters. Users still matter. And disciplines like operations and testing, grounded in reality over theory, have more to contribute than ever. Jesper's book could not be better timed, because the need has never been greater for staff+ contributors in these practical disciplines who can serve as force multipliers and systems thinkers and guides. There is a wealth of practical knowledge in this book, and I suggest you use it.
Charity MajorsCTO/cofounder of honeycomb.ioThe Staff+ role in testing isn't well understood or described in our industry; Jesper's book solves this by providing practical commentary backed up with his experiences and references. As someone working in this space, I see a lot of myself and what I do echoed throughout the book and would recommend anyone wanting to progress their own careers (or engineering leaders looking to understand the value of these roles) read it.
Callum Akehurst-RyanStaff Quality EngineerWhether you’re a senior IC looking to learn more about the next step in your career, or somebody already working at the staff-level, this book is a great descriptor of the industry's expectations and the types of skills needed to excel, with comprehensive references so that you can upskill yourself.
Emily O’ConnorPrincipal Quality Engineerthe book is well timed, validates what the role is designed to be and packed with helpful practical resources that I’m certain I’ll be referring back to more times than I’d ever care to admit
Emily O’ConnorPrincipal Quality Engineer
Contents
Table of Contents
Get the free sample chapters
Click the buttons to get the free sample in PDF or EPUB, or read the sample online here
The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.
You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!
So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?
See full terms...
Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase
We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earned over $15 million writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Write and Publish on Leanpub
You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!
Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.
Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.