Curated interview practice questions with answers. These are practice scenarios, not a verified list of past interview questions.
About UBS hiring for Software Testing roles
UBS is a Swiss global financial services firm known for wealth management, investment banking, asset management and Swiss retail banking. It acquired Credit Suisse in 2023. In India it runs large business solutions and technology centres that hire software engineers, data analysts, risk and finance professionals, and operations roles supporting its global businesses.
For Software Testing roles, this UBS practice set focuses most on Agile, SQL and API Testing (10), Testing Types (5), Accessibility & Usability Testing (5), STLC and Test Planning (4). It has 5 easy, 33 medium, 2 hard questions, so you can start easy and work up to the harder ones.
Company type
Banking & finance
Headquarters
Zurich, Switzerland
Main India offices
Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad
UBS Software Testing interview process
Online assessment (aptitude + coding)
Technical interview
Managerial or business round
HR round
Typical pattern based on public candidate experiences. Rounds vary by role, team and year.
Solved for UBSStart practicing
3 QUESTIONS FREESign up to unlock the full question bank and track your progress.Unlock every question and answer, then continue practising company-wise and package-wise.
Compliance testing checks that software meets external laws, standards or internal policies, not just functional requirements. Examples include payment security standards for card data, data protection rules for personal data, accessibility guidelines and RBI rules for banking apps. Testers verify items such as consent capture, data retention, audit logs and masking. Findings are usually documented as evidence for auditors, so traceability and clear records matter as much as the tests.
Stop using the dynamic ID. Look for a stable alternative: the element's role and visible name, its label, a stable attribute, or a relative locator based on a nearby fixed element. The best long-term fix is asking developers to add a data-testid attribute. Avoid partial matches on random strings, which can break again. Then update the locator in the page object so every test using it is fixed at once.
Verify notifications arrive when the app is in foreground, background and closed. Check title, text, icon and that tapping opens the right screen with the correct data. Test with notifications disabled at OS level and inside app settings. Check behaviour after logout, reinstall and on multiple devices with the same account. Test grouping of many notifications, time-sensitive ones, and that no notification shows private data on the lock screen.
05
How do you test touch target size and gestures for accessibility in a mobile app?
Check that buttons and icons are large enough to tap without hitting neighbours: Android guidance is 48 by 48 dp and iOS is 44 by 44 points. Test with large font settings and one-handed use. Any action using complex gestures, such as swipe to delete or pinch, must have a simple tap alternative. Then turn on TalkBack and VoiceOver and confirm each control can be focused, named and activated.
06
What is the difference between ad hoc testing and monkey testing?
Ad hoc testing is informal testing without test cases, done by a tester who understands the application and tries likely weak areas based on experience. Monkey testing gives random inputs and actions, often without knowing the application, to see if it crashes. Ad hoc testing is targeted and good at finding logical bugs, while monkey testing is good at finding stability issues and is often automated.
A keyboard trap is when focus moves into a component and the user cannot move out using the keyboard, for example an embedded video player or date picker that captures Tab forever. Mouse users never notice, but keyboard and screen reader users are stuck and must reload the page. It fails WCAG criterion 2.1.2. Test every widget by tabbing in and out, and check that Escape closes popups and returns focus.
JSON schema validation checks that a response has the expected structure: required fields are present, data types are correct, formats like email or date are valid and no unexpected fields appear. Instead of checking only one value, it protects against contract changes that break the app. In Postman you can validate a response against a schema in the test script, and run it on every request in a collection.
Installation testing checks that software installs correctly on supported systems: fresh install, custom paths, low disk space, missing prerequisites and clean uninstall. Upgrade testing checks moving from an older version to the new one: user data and settings must be kept, database migrations must run, and the app must work after the upgrade. Also test skipping versions, such as 1.2 to 1.5, and what happens if the upgrade is interrupted.
Defect age is how long a defect stays open, measured either in time, from the date it was logged to the date it was closed, or in phases, from the phase where it was introduced to the phase where it was found. High defect age signals slow fixing or triage. Phase-based age shows how late defects are caught; a requirement defect found in UAT has a high age and is costly.
11
An API returns 200 OK but the body contains an error message. Is that a bug?
Usually yes. Status codes should reflect the result so clients and monitoring can react correctly; an error with 200 can hide failures and break retries. A validation error should return 400 or 422, a missing resource 404 and a server failure 500. Check the API contract first: some legacy APIs document this pattern. If it is not documented, log it as a defect with the request and response attached.
12
A CAPTCHA on the signup page blocks screen reader users. What do you recommend?
Log it as a high-severity accessibility bug because it fully blocks a group of users from signing up. An image-only CAPTCHA fails WCAG unless an alternative is offered. Recommend options such as invisible or risk-based bot checks, an email or OTP verification step, an audio alternative plus another modality, and rate limiting on the server. Retest the full signup with NVDA and TalkBack after the change.
A development model where each development phase has a matching testing phase, such as requirements with acceptance tests and design with integration tests.
14
Write a pytest test using requests that checks a GET call returns 200 and a non-empty list.
Yes, very likely. An index lets the database find rows quickly, like the index of a book. With a small QA table, a full table scan is still fast, but with millions of production rows it becomes slow. Compare indexes on the searched columns in both environments and ask a developer to check the query plan. Test key queries on production-size data in staging, and include data volume in future performance checks.
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.
Cross-site request forgery tricks a logged-in user's browser into sending an unwanted request to a site, such as changing their email, because the browser automatically includes cookies. Prevention includes anti-CSRF tokens in forms, SameSite cookie settings and re-authentication for sensitive actions. Testers check that state-changing requests fail when the token is missing or reused, and that such actions are not done through GET requests.
18
What are ACID properties and how can a tester check them?
ACID means Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability. Atomicity: a transfer that debits one account must also credit the other, or neither happens; test by forcing a failure midway. Consistency: constraints still hold after the transaction. Isolation: two users updating together do not see each other's half-done work; test with two sessions. Durability: committed data survives a restart; test by committing, restarting the service and querying again.
19
Product is running an A/B test on the checkout button. What does QA need to verify?
QA does not decide which version wins, but makes sure the experiment is trustworthy. Verify both variants work end to end, users are split in the agreed ratio, each user sees the same variant consistently across sessions, and analytics events fire correctly for each group. Also check that turning the experiment off returns everyone to the default. A broken tracking event can make the whole experiment's result wrong.
INVEST is a checklist for good user stories: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small and Testable. For testers, testable is the most important: a story must have clear acceptance criteria so you can say pass or fail. Small stories are easier to test within a sprint. If a story fails INVEST, raise it in refinement rather than discovering the gaps during testing.
21
The build arrived three days late but the release date has not moved. How do you prioritise execution?
Rank test cases by business risk and usage: critical flows like login, payment and data saving first, then new features, then high-risk regression from past defects, and cosmetic checks last. Run smoke testing immediately to avoid wasting time on a broken build. Share the reduced plan with the lead and product owner so they know what will not be covered, and get agreement on the remaining risk.
Write one clear objective per case, keep steps short and avoid hard-coding data that changes. Put shared steps such as login into a common precondition instead of repeating them. Use consistent naming, link each case to a requirement and group them by module. Keep expected results specific but not tied to exact pixel layouts. Review and update cases whenever a story changes, so the suite stays trustworthy for regression.
24
Tell me about a time you had to learn SQL or API testing quickly for a project.
Model answer: Situation: in my first project, testers had to verify orders in the database, and I knew only basic SELECT. Task: become useful within a week. Action: I practised joins on a copy of the test database every evening and asked a senior to review my queries. Result: by the second sprint I was validating order data on my own and caught a missing tax column bug.
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.
27
A feature passed all your test cases, but users say it is confusing. What went wrong?
The tests verified the specification but did not validate the user experience. The test cases probably checked only functional outcomes and missed usability: unclear labels, too many steps or poor error messages. Next time, add usability heuristics to reviews, do exploratory sessions as a real user persona and involve users in UAT or demos. Log the current feedback as improvement items with clear examples.
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.
29
How do you test pagination, sorting and filtering through an API?
Suspension criteria define when testing should be paused because continuing would waste effort, for example when a blocker bug stops the main flow, the build fails smoke testing or the environment is down. Resumption criteria define what must happen to restart, such as a new build that passes smoke testing or the environment restored. Writing these down avoids arguments and shows clearly why testing time was lost.
SELECT status, COUNT(*) AS total
FROM orders
WHERE created_at >= CURRENT_DATE
AND created_at < CURRENT_DATE + INTERVAL '1 day'
GROUP BY status
ORDER BY total DESC;
33
Tell me about a time you worked with developers to make an application easier to automate.
Situation: our UI scripts broke almost every sprint because of generated IDs and CSS class changes. Task: as the QA lead I needed stable tests. Action: I showed developers the failure history, proposed adding data-testid attributes and accessible labels to key components and added a short checklist to the pull request template. Result: within two sprints locator-related failures dropped by most of the previous level and maintenance time fell sharply.
34
What is the difference between static and dynamic testing?
A screen reader is software that reads screen content aloud or sends it to a braille display, used mainly by blind and low-vision people. Common ones are NVDA, a free Windows reader, JAWS, a paid Windows reader common in enterprises, VoiceOver, built into macOS and iOS, and TalkBack, built into Android. Testers usually cover NVDA with a desktop browser plus VoiceOver or TalkBack on mobile.
37
What is heuristic evaluation and how is it different from a usability test with users?
Heuristic evaluation is an expert review where a few evaluators inspect the interface against known usability principles, such as Nielsen's ten heuristics, and list problems with severity. It is fast and cheap and needs no participants. A usability test watches real users perform tasks and shows where they actually struggle. Heuristic reviews find many obvious issues early, but they can miss problems that only real users with real goals reveal.
Run the report query with GROUP BY on the business key and HAVING COUNT(*) > 1 to find which records repeat. Then check whether the duplicates exist in the base table or are created by the query, usually a new join to a one-to-many table such as addresses. Compare the query before and after the release. Include the duplicate keys, the count and the suspected join in the bug report.
40
What is localisation and internationalisation testing?
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.
Tips to crack the UBS Software Testing interview
Revise DSA, Java or Python, SQL and OOP concepts, and be ready to explain your code clearly in interviews.
Learn basics of wealth management, investment banking and financial markets to show interest in the business side.
Prepare examples of attention to detail and handling pressure, since banking technology roles demand reliability and accuracy.
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; UBS interviewers usually ask follow-ups on your first answer.
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are there in the UBS Software Testing interview?
Candidates usually go through 4 stages: Online assessment (aptitude + coding); Technical interview; Managerial or business round; 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 UBS Software Testing interview?
This practice set leans on Agile, SQL and API Testing (10), Testing Types (5), Accessibility & Usability Testing (5), STLC and Test Planning (4). Revise those first, then practise explaining one or two of your own projects end to end, because most UBS interviewers ask you to walk through real work.
Are these the exact questions asked at UBS?
No. These are curated practice questions that match the skills and difficulty usually tested in banking & finance interviews like UBS's. They are not a leaked or verified list of past questions.
Where does UBS hire Software Testing professionals in India?
UBS has large teams in Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad. Openings and locations change often, so check the UBS careers page and filter by city and experience.