ICT Quality Assurance Engineer (ANZSCO 263211)

On the Short-term Skilled Occupation List and Core Skills Occupation List

From the official Home Affairs skilled occupation lists, as at 2026-08-12. Lists change at each government update — always confirm on the official page before acting.

Which lists is ICT Quality Assurance Engineer on?

STSOL — Short-term Skilled Occupation List. Occupations on the STSOL can access state-nominated and regional skilled visas (190/491), but not the Skilled Independent 189.

CSOL — Core Skills Occupation List. The employer-sponsorship list — occupations on the CSOL can be nominated for the Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482) and the Employer Nomination Scheme 186.

Visas this occupation can access

Being on a list makes the occupation nominatable for these visas — each visa still has its own requirements (points, age, English, a positive skills assessment, and for sponsored visas a willing employer or state).

Skills assessment

A positive skills assessment for ICT Quality Assurance Engineer comes from:

What the assessment actually involves

ACS assesses ICT Quality Assurance Engineer under its Migration Skills Assessment, choosing between the General Skills pathway (a years-of-experience matrix set by qualification level and how closely your degree matches an ICT major) or RPL for applicants without a closely-related qualification. ACS's own lead definition for this code is process-and-audit focused: it "creates, maintains and manages technical quality assurance processes and procedures to assess efficiency, validity, value and functional performance of computer systems and environments, and audits systems to ensure compliance with" published standards. That audit-and-compliance framing is the code's real anchor, distinct from the other three codes in ACS's support-and-test cluster.

Where these applications come unstuck

This code carries STSOL and CSOL, giving it the full six-visa reach the cluster's broadest members share, but it sits alongside three near-neighbours whose ACS wording overlaps in places. ICT Support Engineer's duties lean toward solving live system problems rather than auditing processes, ICT Systems Test Engineer's toward writing and running test scripts, and the nec code toward blending QA language with support language. A reference letter written around "testing" or "support" generally, rather than process audit and compliance specifically, risks landing on the wrong one of the four.

An honest read on this pathway

Because this code carries both STSOL and CSOL, the 482 and 186 employer-sponsored routes are genuinely open to it, on top of the points-tested and regional pathways the wider cluster shares. It is the only one of the four with a lead definition built explicitly around auditing systems against compliance standards, which is a real, checkable distinguishing feature — worth matching your actual duties against before nominating, rather than assuming any QA-flavoured ICT title fits.

Assembling an ACS application? ACS wants employment evidence that lines up exactly with the dates and duties you claim elsewhere. The Skilled Visa EOI Organiser keeps your claims consistent across the skills assessment, EOI and Form 80 — inconsistencies between them are a common cause of delay.

Talk it through with a registered agent

Whether nominating ICT Quality Assurance Engineer is your best route depends on your points, experience evidence and timing — exactly what a MARA-registered agent works through in an initial consultation. Describe your situation once through Migratio and compare real consultation quotes from registered agents, free.

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