Bloomberg Software Testing Interview Questions & Answers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Statuses like To Do, In Progress, In Review, Ready for QA, Done and Reopened, with transitions that depend on the team's configuration.

A language to query databases. Testers use it to verify data saved by the application, prepare test data and check backend results.

Alpha is done in-house by internal teams before release; beta is done by a limited group of real users in their own environment.

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

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

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.

Valid login, wrong password, empty fields, case sensitivity, max length, SQL-injection strings, password masking, 'remember me', lock-out after N attempts and the forgot-password link.

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.

Peer review for clarity, coverage of requirements, correct expected results, test data and traceability, then update and baseline them.

A human error causes a defect in the code, and when that defect is executed it produces a failure visible to users.

Learning, test design and execution at the same time, without scripted cases — time-boxed sessions with a charter (e.g. 'explore checkout with coupons'), noting bugs and ideas. Great for finding edge cases.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

GET retrieves data and has parameters in the URL; POST sends data in the body to create or process something.

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

Smoke testing checks that the critical features of a new build work (broad and shallow). Sanity testing checks that a specific fix or area works after a change (narrow and deep).

Severity is impact on the system; priority is urgency of the fix. A crash in a rare report is high severity, low priority; a spelling mistake in the logo is low severity, high priority.

INNER returns matching rows, LEFT keeps all left rows, RIGHT keeps all right rows and FULL keeps all rows from both tables.

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.

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

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

Checking that people with disabilities can use the product, using screen readers, keyboard navigation, colour contrast and WCAG guidelines.

Designing tests from user flows described in use cases to verify complete real-world interactions.

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.

Unit, integration, system and acceptance testing, moving from individual components to the complete product in front of users.

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).

Status code, response body and schema, headers, response time, error messages for invalid input, authentication (401/403) and that data is saved in the database.

Verification: are we building the product right? (reviews, walkthroughs — no code run). Validation: are we building the right product? (actual testing against user needs).

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

Defects found after release that testing should have caught; leakage % = defects in production / total defects x 100.

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

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.

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

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

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

By business criticality, usage frequency, defect history, risk and dependencies, running high-priority cases first.

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

Internationalisation tests that the product can support many languages and formats; localisation tests that a specific locale is correct for text, currency, date and layout.

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

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

Re-check the requirement, reproduce with clear steps and evidence (screenshots, logs), discuss with the BA/PO and record the final decision.

Testing shows presence of defects, exhaustive testing is impossible, test early, defects cluster, the pesticide paradox, testing is context-dependent and absence-of-errors is a fallacy.

Evaluating software to find defects and confirm it meets requirements. It reduces risk, protects users and saves the cost of fixing bugs after release.

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

Prioritising tests by the likelihood and impact of failure, so critical areas get the most coverage when time is limited.

Valid keyword, partial match, no results, special characters, very long text, empty search, case sensitivity, spelling errors, suggestions and speed of results.

A regular review where QA, development and product assess new bugs and decide severity, priority, owner and target release.

User Acceptance Testing — end users or the client verify that the system meets business needs in a production-like environment before go-live.

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

Valid card and PIN, wrong PIN, three failed attempts, amount above balance, amount above daily limit, invalid denomination, machine out of cash, network failure and receipt printing.

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.

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