Software Testing Interview Questions for Senior Roles (₹12–15 LPA)

Keep tests modular, prioritise by risk, use exploratory testing, automate stable parts and keep close contact with product owners.

Testing services directly without the UI, checking status codes, responses, security and performance. It finds issues early and is faster than UI tests.

They let testers verify totals and counts per category, such as the number of orders per customer, and compare them with the UI or reports.

The team selects stories for the sprint. QA helps estimate testing effort, clarifies acceptance criteria and flags dependencies and risks.

Entry criteria are conditions that must be met to start testing (build ready, environment set); exit criteria define when testing can stop (pass rate, no critical defects).

A team meeting at the end of a sprint to discuss what went well, what did not and what to improve next.

A shared checklist for when a story is complete, usually including code review, tests passing, no open critical bugs and documentation updated.

A set of steps with inputs and expected results. Components: ID, title, preconditions, steps, test data, expected result, actual result and status.

A model with many fast unit tests at the base, fewer API or integration tests in the middle and a small number of UI tests at the top.

Positive cases use valid inputs to confirm expected behaviour; negative cases use invalid inputs to confirm the system handles errors gracefully.

SDLC is the full software development life cycle; STLC is the testing life cycle: requirement analysis, test planning, test design, environment setup, execution and closure.

List conditions and actions in a table and cover every combination of conditions (rules) — ideal for business rules like loan approval: salary > X AND credit score > Y → approve.

Assess impact and risk, discuss with product and dev, decide to fix, defer with a workaround or delay release, and document the decision.

Test 17, 18, 19, 59, 60 and 61.

Testing at the edges of input ranges, such as 17, 18 and 19 for an age limit of 18, since errors cluster at boundaries.

The hardware, software, data and configuration where testing happens, set up to mirror production as closely as practical.

Valid transfer, insufficient balance, daily limit, wrong beneficiary, OTP failure, network drop mid-transaction, duplicate click and statement update.

Functional testing checks what the system does (login, checkout). Non-functional testing checks how well it does it (performance, security, usability, compatibility).

The observation that a small number of modules contain most defects, so testing should focus on those areas.

A suite is a collection of related test cases; a run is one execution of a set of tests against a build.

An urgent patch released outside the normal schedule to fix a critical production defect, followed by regression testing and merge back to the main branch.

Valid login, invalid login, forgot password, locked account and session handling are the main scenarios to cover.

A scenario is a high-level thing to test (user logs in); test cases are the detailed steps and data that verify it.

Basic operations, division by zero, decimals, large numbers, order of operations, clear and backspace, repeated operations and memory keys.

Risk-based testing: cover critical user flows, recent changes and high-defect areas first. Clearly communicate the untested risks and get stakeholder sign-off.

The number of defects per size of software, for example defects per thousand lines of code or per module, used to compare quality.

Black box tests behaviour without code knowledge; white box tests internal logic and paths; grey box uses partial knowledge of the internals.

Break the work into modules and test cases, use past velocity or three-point estimation (optimistic, likely, pessimistic), add time for test data, environment issues, retesting and regression, and keep a risk buffer.

State the problem, location and condition briefly, for example 'Checkout button disabled after applying a coupon on the cart page'.

Testing that is continuous and collaborative within each sprint, with testers working alongside developers and product owners from the start.

Using experience to guess where defects likely hide, such as empty fields, special characters or unexpected sequences, and designing tests for them.

200 OK, 201 Created, 204 No Content, 400 Bad Request, 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden, 404 Not Found, 500 Internal Server Error.

DELETE removes selected rows and can be rolled back; TRUNCATE quickly removes all rows and resets the table.

Send page, size, sort and filter parameters, then verify counts, order, boundaries (first, last, empty page) and invalid parameter handling.

Finding why a defect was introduced, such as unclear requirements or missed reviews, to prevent similar defects in future.

Reproduce and assess impact, inform stakeholders, help developers fix and verify in staging, run regression and check monitoring after the hotfix, then do a post-mortem.

A defect that stops testing or release of a feature because no workaround exists, so it is highest priority.

Talk to developers and users, explore the product, review similar systems, create notes and mind maps, confirm assumptions and write test cases as you learn.

A grid mapping requirements to test cases and defects, proving every requirement is tested.

Add, remove, update quantity, price and tax calculation, coupon codes, stock limits, cart persistence after login and checkout navigation.

New → Assigned → Open → Fixed → Retest → Verified → Closed, with Reopened, Rejected, Deferred and Duplicate as side paths.

Severity = impact on the system. Priority = urgency to fix. Logo misspelt on the homepage → low severity, high priority. Crash in a rarely used report → high severity, low priority.

A bug is behaviour that deviates from agreed requirements; an enhancement is a new or improved capability beyond the current requirements.

Re-check environment, data, browser and steps; check the logs; try the reporter's setup; add video and console logs; mark it 'cannot reproduce' only after discussing with the developer, and keep monitoring.

Rules such as NOT NULL, UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY and CHECK that keep data valid and consistent.

JIRA Query Language, used to search issues, for example project = ABC AND status = Open AND priority = High.

A technique that tests all pairs of input values instead of every combination, greatly reducing test cases while catching most defects.

Measuring speed and stability: load (expected users), stress (beyond limits), spike (sudden surge), endurance (long duration) and scalability testing.

Allowed and disallowed formats, size limits, empty file, duplicate names, special-character names, cancel upload, slow network and multiple files.

Re-testing existing features after a change. Automate stable, repetitive, high-value flows that run every release.

Use mocks or stubs from the API contract such as Swagger, write test cases early and validate again when the real service is available.

Verifying the application works across different hardware, software and settings combinations.

Code is built and tested automatically on each change; tests are quality gates that stop faulty builds from moving forward.

A document defining scope, approach, resources, schedule, entry and exit criteria, risks and deliverables of testing.

Sprint planning (estimate test effort), daily stand-up (status and blockers), sprint review (demo) and retrospective (improve). Testers clarify acceptance criteria early and test within the sprint.

Static testing reviews documents and code without executing; dynamic testing executes the software to observe behaviour.

Shift left with early reviews, improve test design, automate regression, use better test data, add monitoring and learn from escaped defects.

TDD writes unit tests before code to drive design; BDD describes behaviour in business language scenarios that become automated acceptance tests.

Check SQL injection, brute-force lockout, password masking, session timeout, HTTPS, cookie flags, error messages not revealing users and password reset flow.

Create a request with method, URL, headers and body, send it, check status and body, add test scripts and save it in a collection.

For a field accepting 1–100: valid class 1–100 (test 50), invalid below 1 (test −5), invalid above 100 (test 150). One value represents each class.