Interview Kit
QA and SDET interview questions with answers. Browse by topic or drill with flashcards. Progress is saved in your browser.
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- SeleniumJunior
What is the difference between implicit, explicit and fluent waits?
- SeleniumMid
Why should you avoid mixing implicit and explicit waits?
- SeleniumJunior
How do you choose between ID, CSS and XPath locators?
- SeleniumJunior
How do you handle an iframe in Selenium?
- SeleniumMid
How do you work with multiple windows or tabs?
- SeleniumSenior
How do you interact with elements inside a shadow DOM?
- SeleniumMid
What causes StaleElementReferenceException and how do you fix it?
- SeleniumMid
When would you use JavascriptExecutor, and what are its risks?
- SeleniumMid
What is the difference between driver.close() and driver.quit()?
- SeleniumSenior
How does Selenium Grid 4 run tests in parallel?
- SeleniumMid
What is the Actions class used for?
- SeleniumSenior
What new capabilities did Selenium 4 add over Selenium 3?
- PlaywrightJunior
What is auto-waiting in Playwright?
- PlaywrightJunior
Which locators does Playwright recommend, and in what order?
- PlaywrightMid
What is a browser context and why is it useful for test isolation?
- PlaywrightMid
What are Playwright fixtures and how do you write a custom one?
- PlaywrightMid
How do you mock or modify network requests?
- PlaywrightMid
What is the Playwright trace viewer and when do you turn it on?
- PlaywrightMid
How do web-first assertions differ from plain assertions?
- PlaywrightSenior
How do you reuse authentication across tests?
- PlaywrightMid
How does Playwright run tests in parallel?
- PlaywrightMid
How do you handle iframes and shadow DOM in Playwright?
- PlaywrightJunior
How do you handle dialogs, popups and file downloads?
- PlaywrightSenior
How do you debug a test that passes locally but fails in CI?
- CypressMid
How is Cypress architecturally different from Selenium?
- CypressJunior
Why are Cypress commands asynchronous but not promises?
- CypressMid
What is retry-ability, and which commands retry?
- CypressMid
How does cy.intercept work, and how do you wait for a request?
- CypressMid
What are the main limitations of Cypress?
- CypressMid
What is the difference between cy.get() and cy.contains()?
- CypressMid
How do you create reusable commands and when is that a bad idea?
- CypressSenior
How do you log in once and reuse the session in Cypress?
- CypressMid
What is the difference between cy.wait(1000) and cy.wait("@alias")?
- CypressJunior
What is the difference between e2e and component testing in Cypress?
- CypressMid
How do you handle flaky tests in Cypress?
- CypressSenior
How does Cypress handle iframes and why does it need cy.origin?
- API TestingJunior
What do the main HTTP status code classes mean?
- API TestingJunior
What is the difference between 401 and 403?
- API TestingMid
What does idempotent mean, and which HTTP methods are idempotent?
- API TestingJunior
What is the difference between PUT and PATCH?
- API TestingMid
How do Basic auth, API keys, bearer tokens and OAuth 2.0 differ?
- API TestingMid
What would you assert on a response besides the status code?
- API TestingSenior
What is contract testing and how is it different from end-to-end API tests?
- API TestingMid
How do you test pagination, filtering and sorting?
- API TestingMid
How do you test rate limiting?
- API TestingMid
What negative tests should every endpoint have?
- API TestingMid
REST versus GraphQL: how does testing differ?
- API TestingSenior
How do you test an asynchronous endpoint or a webhook?
- Manual & ProcessJunior
What are the phases of the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)?
- Manual & ProcessJunior
What is the difference between severity and priority?
- Manual & ProcessJunior
Explain boundary value analysis with an example.
- Manual & ProcessJunior
What is equivalence partitioning?
- Manual & ProcessJunior
What is the difference between verification and validation?
- Manual & ProcessJunior
What is a good bug report?
- Manual & ProcessMid
What is the difference between smoke, sanity and regression testing?
- Manual & ProcessMid
How do you decide what to test when time is short?
- Manual & ProcessMid
What is exploratory testing and when is it better than scripted testing?
- Manual & ProcessMid
What is a requirements traceability matrix?
- Manual & ProcessJunior
What is the difference between a test plan and a test strategy?
- Manual & ProcessMid
How does a QA engineer contribute in an agile team?
- Framework DesignJunior
What is the Page Object Model and why use it?
- Framework DesignMid
What is the test pyramid and why does it matter?
- Framework DesignMid
What are the common causes of flaky tests and how do you reduce them?
- Framework DesignMid
How do you run automated tests in CI/CD?
- Framework DesignMid
How do you make tests run in parallel safely?
- Framework DesignMid
What is data-driven testing and how do you implement it?
- Framework DesignMid
What makes a good test report?
- Framework DesignSenior
How do you manage test data and environments?
- Framework DesignSenior
How do you decide what to automate?
- Framework DesignSenior
How would you structure a framework from scratch?
- Framework DesignMid
What is the difference between a hard assertion and a soft assertion?
- Framework DesignSenior
How do you handle cross-browser testing without doubling your runtime?
About this Interview Kit page
QA automation interview questions test your grasp of testing basics, locators, waits, framework design, API testing and CI. This free kit lists more than 60 QA and SDET questions with concise answers and flashcards. Read them by topic, quiz yourself, then practice the same ideas on the site's challenge pages with Selenium, Playwright or Cypress.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most common QA automation interview questions?
Expect questions on implicit versus explicit waits, locator strategies, the Page Object Model, handling iframes and alerts, flaky tests, API testing, and how you structure a framework and run it in CI.
How do I prepare for an SDET interview?
Review testing fundamentals, practice one language such as Java, Python or TypeScript, solve small coding problems, and build a sample framework. Then rehearse explaining design choices like waits, test data and reporting aloud.
What is the difference between implicit and explicit wait in Selenium?
An implicit wait sets a global polling timeout for finding elements. An explicit wait, using WebDriverWait with ExpectedConditions, waits for a specific condition on one element. Selenium advises not mixing them because timeouts can combine unpredictably.
How does Playwright differ from Selenium in interviews?
Playwright auto-waits for elements to be actionable, ships its own test runner, and supports multiple browser contexts and network mocking built in. Selenium 4 uses the WebDriver protocol and relies on explicit waits and separate runners such as TestNG or pytest.
Are the interview questions free to use?
Yes. The kit is free, needs no signup, and runs in your browser. Use the flashcard mode to quiz yourself and the related practice pages to try each concept against a real page.
Free developer tools on Randomly.online
QA Playground is part of Randomly.online. These tools help while you write and debug tests: