Also called: Video Game Tester, Quality Assurance Tester
Plays unfinished games over and over to find bugs, glitches, and crashes.
You spend the day running into the same wall 200 times to see if your character falls through the floor. Every bug gets documented carefully so developers can fix it. It's a classic way into the game industry.
Often hourly contract work.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
High school diploma, about 0 years after high school. HS diploma; attention to detail and gaming skills.
Ways in: On-the-job training. Training cost: Get paid while you train.
Growing slowly. Entry pipeline but contract-heavy.
High risk for 10 years. AI agents now play builds automatically to find crashes and glitches, replacing many manual testers.
Age 18+. One way to start: Apply to game test companies (like Keywords or PTW) or studio QA contract jobs
Classes: Computer applications, English.
Official data: O*NET occupation 15-1253.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.