40 QA Quality Assurance Interview Questions and Answers

They are responsible for testing software, hardware, and other types of systems to ensure they are free of errors or bugs. Testing is the job along with detailed documentation, bug identification, and more. When interviewers ask these kinds of testing interview questions, provide short and sweet responses that display your knowledge without becoming needlessly overdrawn. Are you looking to move into the world of automated software testing as a QA engineer? The software testing life cycle is the testing process with particular steps that need to be executed in a carefully planned sequence to ensure that the product has optimum quality. Quality engineers must be able to communicate effectively with suppliers in order to ensure that the products they are providing meet the company’s standards.

Test driven development or TDD aims to ensure code testability by knowing exactly what you want your software to do. Some existing codebase was not designed with testing in mind, leading to less maintainable code and fear of refactoring. Instead, this methodology wants to use software tests to influence well thought out software implementation as opposed to just banging out code. Agile testing is a testing approach that is aligned with the Agile software development methodology, which emphasizes collaboration, continuous feedback, and rapid iteration. On the contrary, a test plan goes a level lower to give more on the details of things like testing types, tools and timelines. Before taking off to production, teams need to take a good look at test summary reports, remaining defects and release readiness.

QA Engineer Interview Questions

It is done by designing, implementing, and maintaining procedures that help developers and software testers do their jobs in the most efficient way. A “bug release” occurs when the development team transfers the software product to the testing team to address defects. At this time, there’s lots of time to fix the bugs before the program goes live, so it’s a low-severity issue.

Any activities that modify the automation test code like customizing, debugging and refactoring requires a firm understanding of an application’s structure, behavior and technologies. The rule to remember is if it requires insights and judgment from a human, manual testing is the way to go. In contrast, if the flow is repetitive with minor adjustments here and there, it’s better to choose automation testing.

Describe how you determine what software elements or pieces require a specific amount of testing.

This not only helps maintain a high level of product quality but also ensures that your team can effectively communicate and collaborate throughout the development process. As a software quality assurance engineer, you will inevitably encounter bugs that are tricky to reproduce, diagnose, and resolve. Interviewers want to understand how you approach these challenges, as it demonstrates your problem-solving skills, persistence, and ability to think outside the box.

To prepare, review your training and experience, and refresh your memory of common concepts, terms, and methods. They want to know how you approach QA challenges, such as tight deadlines or fixing bugs during the testing process, and the actions you take to succeed. We’ve grouped the following interview questions into three categories—behavioral, situational, and testing-related questions—so that you can prepare for a range of questions. The document that describes, the user action and system response, for a particular functionality is known as USE case. It includes revision history, table of contents, flow of events, cover page, special requirements, pre-conditions and post-conditions.

What is Data-driven Testing?

In several companies you will even be challenged with an interview project, which requires you to demonstrate your software testing skills. You can read through our Katalon Blog for up-to-date information on the testing industry, especially automation testing, which will surely be useful in your QA interview. We recommend that you only use the answers we provide in this section as references, and try to put in your real-life stories for the most authentic response. You can leverage the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, and Result) we mentioned above for such behavioral questions. This helps the interviewer understand how you approach problems and can be more valuable than simply giving a correct answer. The importance of Agile testing lies in its ability to catch defects early in the development cycle, giving teams ample time to troubleshoot.

Your answer should demonstrate that you’re capable of setting up systems that will help you stay on track and minimize errors. You need to be able to keep stakeholders, customers, and other departments in the loop about the progress of a project and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Hiring managers want to know that you can communicate effectively and ensure that everyone is kept up-to-date. Common QA interview questions, how to answer them, and sample answers from a certified career coach. These types of queries will always have you draw upon that knowledge base you have to answer the question in a way the interviewer finds satisfactory.

What is Agile testing and what is the importance of Agile testing?

Christina is a senior QA engineer with expertise in test automation, test management, and manual testing for web and mobile applications. She has created test automation frameworks from the ground up using Selenium WebDriver in several projects as well as automating API testing using REST-assured and Postman. With experience in both private and public sectors, Christina has worked with large, medium-size, and small startup companies.

Identifying the most common questions in QA job interviews is deceptively simple. You have general questions that are asked at every interview like “Where did you go to school? ” However, you’ll also get more pointed questions asking about your general knowledge base and hypothetical questions, too. It’s recommended that qa engineer strengths and weaknesses you tailor your resume to every job you apply for to maximize your opportunity at getting an interview. A willingness to grow, learn, and push themselves is the best quality for QA job candidates. It’s fine if this particular position may only be a stepping stone for your career, but don’t let your interviewer know this.

What Are The Differences Between Quality Assurance & Quality Control?

When answering this question, you should emphasize your ability to remain calm and professional in difficult conversations. Explain that you are able to identify the root cause of any issues and work with suppliers to come up with an action plan to address them. Demonstrate your understanding of the importance of maintaining a good relationship with suppliers by emphasizing how you strive to ensure that both parties are satisfied with the outcome. Additionally, mention any strategies or techniques you use to ensure that these conversations remain productive and focused on problem-solving.

They aren’t interested in manufacturing code or components of a product behind the scenes– they are invested in being hands-on during the project and are willing to lead a team. Executing high priority test cases and then lower priority test cases ensure that the product’s substantial defects will be detected first. I would also determine customer preference to find the most desired and important functions of the product and then test those areas before moving on to less important functions. The ultimate goal of a QA engineer is to protect the product (and ultimately the company) from issues related to government regulations.

If you don’t have any direct experience, talk about your ability to work independently and manage multiple tasks at once. Give examples of times when you worked effectively without having direct guidance or supervision from a team leader. Additionally, emphasize any skills that would help you succeed in a remote setting such as strong communication and organizational skills. Especially when interviewing for a QA lead job, you’ll need to display your variety of knowledge.

• It’d be impossible to not have any business stakeholders like clients or product managers in software projects.
• Jakub has designed and implemented QA testing for Mastercard, Capgemini, and several other small and midsized businesses.
• Consider these questions to relate to the backbone of QA testing responsibilities.
• Finally, discuss the outcome of your efforts and how it improved the quality of the product or process.
• I myself wasn’t sure I was going to stay in QA, but here I am—15 years later and I’m still in this field.