01
How do you test file upload via API?
Show answer
Use request.post with multipart: { file: { name, mimeType, buffer } } and assert the response and stored file details.
IBM Playwright Testing Interview Questions & Answers
Curated interview practice questions with answers. These are practice scenarios, not a verified list of past interview questions.
About IBM hiring for Playwright Testing roles
IBM is a global technology company offering hybrid cloud, AI through watsonx, software such as Red Hat, infrastructure and IBM Consulting services. Its India Software Labs and IBM Consulting teams form one of its largest workforces outside the US. It hires in India for software developers, test engineers, data engineers, data scientists and consultants.
For Playwright Testing roles, this IBM practice set focuses most on Fixtures and Hooks (7), Locators and Assertions (5), JavaScript and TypeScript (5), API Testing (4). It has 13 easy, 24 medium, 3 hard questions, so you can start easy and work up to the harder ones.
- Company type
- IT services
- Headquarters
- Armonk, New York, USA
- Main India offices
- Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Gurugram
IBM Playwright Testing interview process
- Online assessment (cognitive games + coding)
- English language test
- Technical interview
- Managerial or HR round
Typical pattern based on public candidate experiences. Rounds vary by role, team and year.
Solved for IBMStart practicing
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02
What is a worker process in Playwright Test?
Show answer
A worker is a separate operating system process that runs test files. Each worker starts its own browser, and tests inside a worker run one after another, while different workers run at the same time. Workers do not share memory, so you cannot pass variables between them. Worker-scoped fixtures are created once per worker, which is why expensive setup is often placed there.
03
How do you run a single test or file in Playwright?
Show answer
npx playwright test tests/login.spec.ts, add -g "test title" to match a name, or use test.only while debugging.
04
What is a HAR file?
Show answer
HAR stands for HTTP Archive. It is a JSON file that records the requests and responses a browser made, including URLs, headers, bodies and timings. Browsers can export one from DevTools, and Playwright can record and replay them. In testing it is used for mocking whole sets of API calls and for sharing network evidence in bug reports.
05
How do you handle shadow DOM?
Show answer
Playwright locators pierce open shadow roots by default, so getByRole and CSS locators work without special handling.
06
How does this behave in arrow functions compared with regular functions?
Show answer
A regular function gets this from how it is called, so passing a class method as a callback can lose this. An arrow function has no own this and uses the value from the surrounding code. In page objects, arrow functions in callbacks such as map keep access to this.page, which avoids undefined errors.
07
What are projects in playwright.config?
Show answer
Named configurations that run the same tests across different browsers, devices or environments.
08
What does the Pick locator tool do?
Show answer
In the Inspector, UI mode and the VS Code extension, Pick locator lets you hover over any element on the page and see the locator Playwright recommends for it, usually a role or label based one. You can copy it into your test. It is a fast way to write locators and to check whether an existing one is unique.
09
What happens the first time toHaveScreenshot runs and no baseline image exists?
Show answer
Playwright cannot compare anything, so it captures the screenshot, saves it as the new baseline in the snapshots folder and marks the test as failed with a message that the snapshot was missing. On the next run the test compares against that file. This is why you review new baselines before committing them, and why baselines should be generated in the same environment that CI uses.
10
What is the blob reporter and why does it exist?
Show answer
The blob reporter writes a compact archive of everything about a run, including results, attachments and traces, into the blob-report folder. It is meant for machines rather than people. Each shard produces one blob, and npx playwright merge-reports later combines them into a single HTML, JUnit or JSON report. Without it, every shard would produce its own separate HTML report.
11
What is a locator in Playwright?
Show answer
An object describing how to find an element, re-evaluated on every action so it always targets the current DOM.
12
Write a custom fixture that gives a logged-in page.
Show answer
import { test as base } from '@playwright/test';
export const test = base.extend({
loggedInPage: async ({ page }, use) => {
await page.goto('/login');
await page.getByLabel('Email').fill('qa@test.in');
await page.getByLabel('Password').fill('Pass@123');
await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Sign in' }).click();
await use(page);
},
});
13
Parallel tests create users with the same email and fail with 'already exists'. How do you fix it?
Show answer
Generate unique data per test, for example by adding testInfo.testId, the parallel index or a random suffix to the email, or by using a data builder that creates a fresh user through the API. Avoid hard-coded shared records in test files. Clean up created users in a fixture teardown so the database does not fill up over time.
14
How do you measure API response time?
Show answer
Record timestamps around the request or use response timing, then assert the duration is under an agreed threshold.
15
How does Playwright's trace viewer help?
Show answer
It records screenshots, DOM snapshots, network calls and actions per step so you can replay a failed run and see exactly what happened.
16
What is Playwright and which browsers does it support?
Show answer
An open-source end-to-end testing framework from Microsoft that automates Chromium, Firefox and WebKit through one API, in multiple languages.
17
What is the difference between await expect(locator) and a plain expect on a value?
Show answer
await expect(locator).toHaveText('Paid') is a web-first assertion: it retries until the element matches or the timeout ends. expect(value).toBe('Paid') is a generic assertion that checks a value once, immediately. Use web-first assertions for anything on the page and generic ones for plain data such as an API JSON field you already have.
18
What is Playwright component testing?
Show answer
Component testing mounts a single UI component, such as a React or Vue button or form, in a real browser page and tests it with the normal Playwright API. Playwright bundles the component with Vite, serves it on a small page and gives you a mount fixture. You get real browser rendering and events, which unit tests in jsdom cannot give, while staying much faster than full end-to-end flows. The feature is still marked experimental.
19
Which locators does Playwright recommend?
Show answer
User-facing ones: getByRole, getByText, getByLabel, getByPlaceholder and getByTestId, which are more resilient than CSS or XPath.
20
How do you test conditional GET requests that use ETag and If-None-Match?
Show answer
Call the endpoint once and read the etag header from the response. Call it again with the If-None-Match header set to that value and assert status 304 with an empty body. Then change the resource, repeat the conditional call and assert 200 with a new ETag. This proves caching works and that updates are not hidden behind stale responses.
21
Component and end-to-end tests run together and slow down every commit. How do you separate them?
Show answer
Give them separate configs, such as playwright-ct.config.ts with its own testDir for component specs and playwright.config.ts for end-to-end tests, because component tests also need the bundler options and framework test import. In CI, run component tests on every commit as a fast job and end-to-end tests later or in parallel. Shared settings like reporters can live in a common module both configs import.
22
Why choose Playwright over Selenium?
Show answer
Auto-waiting, a built-in test runner, Chromium/Firefox/WebKit with one API, network interception, the trace viewer and parallel runs out of the box — usually faster and less flaky.
23
Why should you start waitForResponse before the action that triggers it?
Show answer
If you click first and then wait, the response may already have arrived, so the wait misses it and times out. Create the promise first, then act, then await it: const resp = page.waitForResponse('**/api/cart'); await addButton.click(); await resp. waitForRequest works the same way for outgoing requests.
24
How does URL matching work in page.route?
Show answer
The first argument can be a glob string, a regular expression or a function that receives a URL object. Globs like '**/api/users*' are simple but * does not cross slashes and ** does. Regex gives precise control over query strings. A predicate function suits complex rules, for example matching host plus a specific search parameter.
25
Describe a time you convinced developers to add accessible labels or test ids.
Show answer
Situation: many inputs had no labels, so our tests relied on long CSS selectors that broke often. Task: get stable hooks without slowing developers. Action: I listed the worst screens, showed how getByLabel tests read and how the same labels help screen reader users, and offered to raise small pull requests myself. Result: the team added labels to new work as a rule and locator breakages dropped sharply.
26
Show a config with a setup project and a browser project that reuses its login.
Show answer
projects: [
{ name: 'setup', testMatch: /auth\.setup\.ts/ },
{
name: 'chromium',
use: { ...devices['Desktop Chrome'], storageState: '.auth/user.json' },
dependencies: ['setup'],
},
],
27
let vs const vs var?
Show answer
var is function-scoped and hoisted. let and const are block-scoped; const can't be reassigned (though an object it points to can change). Prefer const, then let.
28
What do beforeAll and afterAll do?
Show answer
beforeAll runs once before the tests in its file or describe block, and afterAll runs once after them. In Playwright they run once per worker, so if tests are spread over workers they can run more than once. They suit cheap shared setup. They cannot use test-scoped fixtures like page, so open your own page from the browser fixture if needed.
29
What does the nullish coalescing operator do?
Show answer
a ?? b returns b only when a is null or undefined. Unlike ||, it keeps valid falsy values such as 0, false and an empty string. In config this matters: process.env.RETRIES ?? '2' keeps a value of 0 if someone sets it, whereas || would wrongly replace it. It is often combined with optional chaining.
30
How do you combine fixtures from several files with mergeTests?
Show answer
When teams define fixtures in separate modules, such as dbTest and a11yTest, mergeTests(dbTest, a11yTest) returns one test object that has all their fixtures. mergeExpects does the same for custom matchers. This keeps fixture modules small and owned by different people. Watch for name clashes, because two modules defining the same fixture name will conflict.
31
How do you send a POST request with a JSON body?
Show answer
await request.post('/api/users', { data: { name: 'Asha' } }) automatically sets JSON headers and serialises the payload.
32
A test fails with 'Target page, context or browser has been closed'. What usually causes it?
Show answer
Most often an action was not awaited, so the test finished and Playwright closed the page while the action was still running. Other causes are a test timeout closing the page, the code closing the page or context itself, or the browser crashing. Check the stack for the missing await, look at whether a timeout happened first, and turn on the lint rule for floating promises.
33
How do you use test.step and test annotations?
Show answer
test.step groups actions into named steps in reports; annotations such as test.skip, test.fixme and test.slow communicate intent and adjust behaviour.
34
How does Playwright talk to browsers, and why does that make it less flaky?
Show answer
Playwright runs outside the browser and controls it through a persistent connection using each engine's own protocol, such as CDP for Chromium and patched protocols for Firefox and WebKit. It can watch DOM, network and events directly, so it waits on real state instead of polling from inside the page. This gives reliable auto-waiting, multi-tab and network control.
35
How do you pass slots and listen to events in a Vue component test?
Show answer
With the Vue package you can mount with an options object: mount(Button, { props: { label: 'Save' }, slots: { default: 'Click me' }, on: { click: handler } }). The on map receives emitted events, so you can push payloads into an array and assert on them. JSX syntax is also supported if the project is configured for it.
36
How do you provide page objects as fixtures?
Show answer
type Pages = { loginPage: LoginPage; cartPage: CartPage };
export const test = base.extend<Pages>({
loginPage: async ({ page }, use) => {
await use(new LoginPage(page));
},
cartPage: async ({ page }, use) => {
await use(new CartPage(page));
},
});
// test('x', async ({ loginPage }) => { ... })
37
Why can beforeAll run more than once in a Playwright run?
Show answer
Each worker is a separate process with its own state. When tests from a file are split across workers, or a worker restarts after a failure, beforeAll runs again in the new worker. So never assume it runs only once globally. For one-time setup across the whole run, use a setup project with dependencies or globalSetup.
38
What is the difference between unknown and any in TypeScript?
Show answer
any switches off type checking, so any property access compiles even if it crashes at runtime. unknown accepts any value but forces you to narrow or validate it before use. For API JSON in tests, typing it as unknown and then validating or asserting a type is safer than any, because mistakes appear at compile time.
39
What are closures?
Show answer
A function that remembers variables from its outer scope even after that scope has finished. They are used for private state and factory helpers.
40
How do you skip a test only in WebKit?
Show answer
test('drag a file onto the upload zone', async ({ page, browserName }) => {
test.skip(browserName === 'webkit', 'Known WebKit drag issue, ticket QA-123');
await page.goto('/upload');
// rest of the test
});
Tips to crack the IBM Playwright Testing interview
- Practise IBM's game-based cognitive assessments, which test pattern recognition, memory and numerical reasoning quickly.
- Learn basics of hybrid cloud, Red Hat OpenShift and watsonx, which IBM promotes as core strategic areas.
- Revise SQL, Python or Java fundamentals and be ready to explain one project in depth.
- Keep a one-minute story ready for every project on your CV: problem, your part, tools, result.
- Practise the hard questions on this page aloud; IBM interviewers usually ask follow-ups on your first answer.
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are there in the IBM Playwright Testing interview?
Candidates usually go through 4 stages: Online assessment (cognitive games + coding); English language test; Technical interview; Managerial or HR round. The exact rounds change with the role, team, location and your experience, so confirm the process with the recruiter.
Which topics should I prepare for the IBM Playwright Testing interview?
This practice set leans on Fixtures and Hooks (7), Locators and Assertions (5), JavaScript and TypeScript (5), API Testing (4). Revise those first, then practise explaining one or two of your own projects end to end, because most IBM interviewers ask you to walk through real work.
Are these the exact questions asked at IBM?
No. These are curated practice questions that match the skills and difficulty usually tested in it services interviews like IBM's. They are not a leaked or verified list of past questions.
Where does IBM hire Playwright Testing professionals in India?
IBM has large teams in Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Gurugram. Openings and locations change often, so check the IBM careers page and filter by city and experience.
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