By Sunil Bagga, QA Manager and QA Community Lead at Leighton
The world of Quality Assurance (QA) wasn’t just a career path for me; it was a calling. I’ve always had an analytical mindseta natural curiosity that made me question why things work the way they do and, more importantly, why they sometimes don’t. From the moment I stumbled upon QA, I knew it was the perfect blend of detective work and problem solving, and I was hooked.
At its core, Quality Assurance is the practice of making sure that the products we use every day work the way they should. It’s about testing, yes, but also about preventing problems before they reach customers. QA blends detective work, problem solving and collaboration to ensure that businesses deliver reliable, secure and high-performing experiences.
That curiosity about why things break became the foundation for a career that’s spanned everything from financial services and e-commerce to public sector transformation. But what’s surprised me most isn’t the complexity of the systems I’ve worked with; it’s how often quality is treated as an afterthought.
QA is more than finding bugs
At its heart, QA isn’t just about testing, it’s about engineering confidence into the development process. And in today’s business climate, confidence is everything.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing QA as a cost centre, a process step, or worse, a blocker. But strong QA is a business enabler. Done well, it reduces risk, accelerates delivery, and ensures that the user experience doesn’t become an afterthought.
During my time at organisations like British Airways, EDF Energy and AXA XL, I learned that the value of QA scales with the size of the system and the impact of failure. Testing becomes not just about whether something works, but whether it performs reliably under pressure, integrates seamlessly with other services, and can adapt to change quickly.
Lessons from the field
Across different industries, from financial services to retail, I’ve worked with global teams to establish test strategies, roll out automation frameworks, and integrate performance and security testing into the heart of delivery pipelines. But the technical toolkit is only half the story.
The real challenge is helping businesses see QA as a strategic partner. When I led QA efforts on cloud migration programmes or enterprise automation initiatives, success came down to collaboration. It wasn’t about being the person who says, “this is broken.” It was about being the person who helps the team understand why it broke, how to fix it, and what we can do to stop it happening again.
It’s this ability to make the complex simple, whether that’s debugging a flaky test or translating risk into business language, that I believe defines modern QA leadership.
The evolving role of QA in business
We’re in an era where automated testing, performance insights, and security validations aren’t just technical nice-to-haves, they’re essential for scaling digital services. At MotoNovo Finance and Animal Friends Insurance, for example, I helped architect solutions that removed thirdparty dependencies, drove data-driven API testing, and validated pricing algorithms under load.
Today, at Leighton, I’m not just leading QA efforts, I’m building a community. Through mentoring, knowledge sharing, and open dialogue, we’re ensuring that QA isn’t a silo, it’s a mindset shared across the organisation. Quality doesn’t belong to one team. It’s a shared responsibility.
What’s next for QA and for me
Looking ahead, I see QA and architecture becoming ever more connected. I’m passionate about evolving my role toward solution architecture, bringing the same rigour and critical thinking that defines QA to system design. After all, the earlier you embed quality, the fewer compromises you make down the line.
To anyone exploring a career in QA, my advice is this: stay curious, don’t be afraid to ask difficult questions, and remember that your job isn’t just to find faults, it’s to help the business move forward with confidence.
Quality assurance isn’t just about better software. It’s about better business. And in a world where trust, speed, and user experience are everything, QA has never been more important.
leighton.com