What are your expectations of the software tester role after two years from now, with the booming of AI?

Two years from now, honestly? The role shifts from doing to thinking.

AI will write the test cases. AI will run the regression. AI will even flag the anomalies.

But here's what I keep coming back to — AI doesn't know what it doesn't know. It tests what you tell it to test. It has no intuition. No gut feeling when something technically passes but feels wrong.

That's where the tester becomes more valuable, not less.

The best testers two years from now will look less like executors and more like quality architects — people who design the strategy, challenge the requirements before a line of code is written, and know when to trust the AI output and when to question it.

And in domains like aviation? That judgment isn't optional. A missed edge case isn't a bad sprint — it can be a safety incident.

So my honest expectation: the role gets harder to do well and easier to do poorly. The gap between a great tester and a mediocre one widens significantly — because AI raises the floor but doesn't raise the ceiling.

The testers who survive aren't the ones who run the most test cases. They're the ones who ask the best questions.

I believe the software tester role will become more important in the next two years. As developers use AI more, it can introduce new types of bugs and unexpected issues. Because of that, testers will have a bigger responsibility to catch these problems and ensure quality. The role will also shift toward more automation and technical skills. Overall, AI will support testing, but it won’t replace the need for testers.

I believe that in the next two years, with the growth of AI, the role of a software tester will become more strategic rather than manual. AI will handle repetitive tasks like test execution and test case generation, while testers will focus more on critical thinking, test design, and understanding business requirements.
I expect to use AI tools to improve efficiency and coverage, but my main role will be ensuring product quality, validating real user scenarios, and identifying risks that AI might miss.
In short, I see myself evolving into a quality-focused professional who leverages AI, not replaced by it.

I believe that in the next two years, the role of software testers will become even more essential, but in a different way than before. With the rise of AI, there will be a strong need for skilled testers who can evaluate, review, and enhance AI-generated outputs, especially since AI can sometimes produce inaccurate or misleading results. I also think testers will play a key role in ensuring the reliability and quality of AI systems by designing effective test scenarios and validating outcomes from a business perspective. Additionally, while AI will handle many tasks, there will still be a need for professionals who can step in and work independently when needed. Overall, I see the future of testing as a collaboration between human expertise and AI capabilities, where testers guide and improve the use of AI rather than being replaced by it.

I think AI will significantly enhance testers’ productivity and efficiency, but it won’t fully replace them due to its potential for errors and hallucinations, which require human oversight. This applies to most professions, not just testing. However, those who fail to keep up with the rapid evolution of AI may see their roles reduced or stagnate, while those who adapt and leverage AI effectively will gain a strong competitive advantage.

Two years from now, major AI companies are gonna double the subscription fees to cover the cost of their servers..

Won't be eaily feasible for someone in tech to have a personal premium account on any respectable ai platform.

There gonna be massive hiring for Testers to clean after AI..😅

Testing is becoming all agentic. You don’t need selectors, you don’t need scripts anymore – you only need goals. No assertions to write, no locator breakages to worry about, self-healing scripts. What used to dominate your whole sprint has become a non-issue. And if you’re still developing your career around writing locators and fixing flaky scripts – that skillset will soon become obsolete.

But somehow, somewhere there should be someone deciding whether the goal that’s being checked is right. There should be someone to see what the agent missed due to its misunderstanding of the business side. There should be someone to declare: "This test passed, but it's wrong anyway". It can't be prompted; that's the knowledge about the system acquired through experience.

Testers who get nervous are those for whom script writing was all their value. Those who don't get worried were concerned about reasons of failures and not about automation of checking. This difference is going to be really important in two years, rather than which automation tool you're using.

I believe the role of software testers will evolve, not disappear. AI will help testers automate repetitive tasks, generate test cases faster, and improve productivity. However, human testers will still be essential for critical thinking, exploratory testing, understanding user behavior, and validating AI-generated results. Testers who learn AI tools, automation, and analytical skills will have stronger opportunities in the future.

The Core idea/value in Testing (i believe )is not about writing scripts or getting adapted to the new techs (they are all important for sure , but not more than the core idea) . which is having a Break It mindset

so i would say when an organisation is looking for a tester in the next two years , this will be the core idea they will be looking for  . with the ever changing tech stack and the fast pacing AI, the ability to adapt will be the next important skill .

I believe Testing will be more important in the following years and where AI agents/Tools will improve the work pace but quality should always be the primary factor 

As AI takes over routine test processes and boilerplate automation tasks, I believe that the software tester's focus needs to shift to where human judgment is irreplaceable. They will be responsible for validating complex business workflows, auditing AI features for accuracy and bias, and safeguarding the end-to-end user experience.

Ultimately, testers are moving from simply hunting for bugs to orchestrating the AI tools that ensure the software’s reliability. 

I think testers will be transitioning to orchestrators and coordinators of the testing process. With continuously improving models, the QA Engineer role as we know it will likely stop existing. It will transition to something else — QA AI trainers, orchestrators, something along those lines.

The reason QAEs are the right people for that transition is simple: they know what needs to be tested and how. That expertise doesn't disappear — it becomes the input for setting up and governing fully autonomous QA systems. Once that transition is done, they're not QAEs anymore. They're something new.

My bet is that within two years, in well-resourced companies, AI-driven workflows will handle most of what traditional QAEs do today. The non-determinism of models is real, but that's what the connected workflows around them are designed to compensate for. The system becomes waterproof — not because the model is perfect, but because the setup around it is.

And it's worth noting that the developer role is changing in parallel. As that boundary shifts, the two roles might actually converge rather than just evolve separately — which makes the transition even more significant.

The exact pace depends on how good the models get in these two years. But the direction? Pretty clear.