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QA / Test Engineer interview questions

QA interviews check whether you think like a tester: finding edge cases, writing clear bug reports, and choosing what to automate. For automation roles, expect live coding with Selenium, Playwright or an API testing tool.

12 questions with answer notes · 4 rounds · By the JOBSPOT 360 team

How the selection process usually works

  1. 1

    Online assessment

    Testing concepts MCQs, basic programming and sometimes SQL.

  2. 2

    Manual testing round

    Write test cases for an everyday object or app screen, the SDLC and STLC, and the bug life cycle.

  3. 3

    Automation round

    Locators, waits, framework design (POM), API testing and a small scripting task.

  4. 4

    Managerial / HR

    How you work with developers, release pressure and HR discussion.

Rounds vary between companies. Smaller teams often merge the technical and managerial rounds, while larger companies may add an extra technical round.

Skills to brush up on

  • Manual testing and test case design
  • SDLC, STLC and Agile/Scrum
  • Selenium or Playwright
  • Java, Python or JavaScript for automation
  • API testing (Postman, REST Assured)
  • SQL for data validation
  • Jira or a similar bug tracker
  • CI basics (Jenkins, GitHub Actions)

Technical questions

  1. 01 What is the difference between verification and validation?

    How to answer: Verification asks "are we building the product right?" (reviews, walkthroughs). Validation asks "are we building the right product?" (actually testing it).

  2. 02 Explain severity versus priority with an example.

    How to answer: Severity is technical impact; priority is business urgency. A logo typo on the home page is low severity but high priority.

  3. 03 What are boundary value analysis and equivalence partitioning?

    How to answer: Group inputs into classes that behave the same and test one from each, then test at and just around the edges, such as 17, 18, 60 and 61 for an age field of 18 to 60.

  4. 04 Describe the bug life cycle.

    How to answer: New, assigned, open, fixed, retest, then verified and closed, or reopened. Mention the deferred, duplicate and rejected states too.

  5. 05 What is the difference between smoke, sanity and regression testing?

    How to answer: Smoke checks that a build is stable enough to test. Sanity checks a specific fix. Regression confirms that existing features still work after changes.

  6. 06 Selenium: explain implicit, explicit and fluent waits.

    How to answer: Implicit waits apply globally to element lookups. Explicit waits wait for a specific condition. Fluent waits add polling intervals and ignored exceptions. Avoid Thread.sleep.

  7. 07 What is the Page Object Model and why use it?

    How to answer: Each page is a class holding its locators and actions, so tests read like user steps and a UI change is fixed in one place.

  8. 08 How do you test a REST API?

    How to answer: Check status codes, the response schema and data, headers, auth, negative cases and response time. Chain requests where one response feeds the next.

Scenario questions

  1. 01 Write test cases for a login page.

    How to answer: Cover valid login, wrong password, empty fields, case sensitivity, SQL injection strings, account lockout, password masking, "remember me" and keyboard navigation.

  2. 02 A developer says your bug "cannot be reproduced". What do you do?

    How to answer: Share exact steps, test data, environment, build number, screenshots or a video and logs. Then reproduce it together.

  3. 03 You have one day before release and 300 test cases. How do you decide what to run?

    How to answer: Prioritise by risk: critical user flows, recently changed areas and areas with past defects. Communicate what was not covered.

  4. 04 Your automated tests pass locally but fail randomly in CI. How do you fix the flakiness?

    How to answer: Look for timing issues, shared test data and order dependence. Replace sleeps with explicit waits and isolate test data.
Then comes the HR round Almost every interview ends with HR questions about you, your plans and your salary expectations. See the common ones and how to answer them.

Resume tips for this role

  • Quantify your work: number of test cases written, defects found or regression time saved through automation.
  • Name the automation framework you built or maintained and the tools in it.
  • Mention the domains you have tested (banking, e-commerce, healthcare). Domain knowledge is valued.
  • An ISTQB Foundation certificate helps freshers stand out.

This guide is written by the JOBSPOT 360 team from common interview patterns for this kind of role. It is not provided by any employer, and real interviews will differ. Read our editorial policy.