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I am working as a QA but now my team has put me into ETL. Will it help in testing if I learn ETL process?

I want to pursue my career in QA

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    Remember to avoid talking solely about development on your resume without being prepared to answer why you are in QA. I have a heavy development background and every interview I get asked 'Why are you not a developer?'
    – Paul Muir
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 11:40

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Yes. Definitely it will help you.

It's a skill in demand.

But from my experience in ETL Testing, I would suggest you put more emphasis on understanding the end to end understanding of the ETL solution implemented (As you have mentioned). At least, you should know: how data is extracted from multiple sources? What is transformation logic and how it works? and final loading on data in the some data warehouse.

Being good at writing database queries does not mean good ETL testing skills. Clear understanding of ETL concepts is important for a good ETL tester.

Writing database queries is supporting skill for an ETL tester which is must required. But it is still a secondary skill. The primary skill is the knowledge and overall understanding of ETL concepts and ETL solution that has to be tested.

I know many testers who are very good with writing queries but miss many testing scenarios while testing and ETL solution. There is a simple reason for it; lack of ETL mindset.

If you carry an ETL mindset and have clear understanding of ETL concepts,good understanding of all the databases involved, as the data moves from source to destination; then there are high chances that you will be able to identify more testing scenarios (even for the intermediate databases involved). I don't say that skill of writing good SQL queries is not important. But, I would give more priority to understanding the complete ETL implementation over writing SQL queries.

If you keep this in mind during your journey to becoming an ETL tester, I bet that it will help you.

All the best on your journey of becoming a QA!!

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It does. There are many organizations that require ETL testers. The first requirement for an ETL tester position, of course, is knowledge/experience in ETL and related fields. In fact, there is a dearth of ETL testers where I am based. A mid level company my friend(an ETL tester) works in started taking in manual testers and training them on ETL because they couldn't find fitting candidates.

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    Then can show I have worked on ETL development. It will help me in future .
    – neha sharma
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 9:26
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Yes but probably only a little

Background: I've worked in Data Warehousing for 5+ years, Application Development for 10+ years and Quality Engineering for 4+ years

Most of the tasks involved in ETL are about organizing and manipulating data; using ETL tools; writing scripts. Not about writing tests, unit tests, browser tests, accessibility tests, etc.

However, as with many thing IT there are some technologies and skills that will transfer. Examples:

  • SQL knowledge and skills. Great for QA debugging and analysis
  • Project management tools like Jira
  • Tests. A modern shop may have tests for ETL programs so you can learn testing skills
  • Verifications. Even if there are no tests there are often some sort of verifications
  • Data Manipulation. Always a useful skill and very transferable.
  • Domain Knowledge. Becoming an expert in the domain and data is very valuable for QA
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