Testing & Quality
Making sure every chip works before it ships.
What it is
Every chip is checked before it is sold. Test engineers design the checks that catch a bad chip, and quality teams make sure the whole process stays reliable, batch after batch. It is detective work: finding problems and working out why they happened.
What a day of this work is like
Test work often mixes lab time, connecting a chip to test equipment, with looking at results from thousands of chips to spot patterns. Quality work leans more on process: writing down what went wrong, and helping fix the step that caused it.
How people get here
Helpful school subjects: Maths, Physics, Computing, Statistics, if your school offers it.
University subjects that lead here: Electrical engineering; Physics; Computer science, for the software side of testing.
- No degree neededOpenA two-year college course in electronics engineering technology leads to technician roles that run tests in a lab.
- University degreeOpenA degree in electrical engineering leads to test engineer roles that design the tests.
No route on these pages guarantees a job. They show the usual ways people get in, and where a way in is narrow, they say so.
What this page doesn't cover
This page does not cover the brands of test equipment, which vary by company, or the exact certificates an employer may ask for.
What to do next
At school
- Khan Academy: free maths and physics lessons ↗
- Try a simple electronics kit or a school club, and keep notes on what worked and what did not. That habit is the heart of test work.
At college or university
- Take a statistics course alongside your engineering subjects. Test results are read in large batches.
- Read what engineering technicians do ↗
Changing career
- Read the two-year college route ↗
- If you already do lab or quality work in another industry, those skills carry over. Look for test technician roles near chip companies.
Links marked ↗ go to other organisations. We do not run them and are not paid to list them.