Curated interview practice questions with answers. These are practice scenarios, not a verified list of past interview questions.
About Zerodha hiring for Software Testing roles
Zerodha is an Indian stockbroker known for discount brokerage and platforms like Kite, Console and Coin. It runs a relatively small in-house technology team that builds trading and back-office systems. Hiring for technical and analytics roles is limited and tends to value practical skills, open-source work and self-learning.
For Software Testing roles, this Zerodha practice set focuses most on Agile, SQL and API Testing (7), STLC and Test Planning (7), Bug Life Cycle and Jira (6), Performance and Security Basics (4). It has 4 easy, 31 medium, 5 hard questions, so you can start easy and work up to the harder ones.
Company type
Fintech
Headquarters
Bengaluru, India
Main India offices
Bengaluru
Zerodha Software Testing interview process
Application review (projects or GitHub)
Technical discussion
Assignment or practical task
Founder or team round
Typical pattern based on public candidate experiences. Rounds vary by role, team and year.
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01
What is SQL injection and how can a tester check for it at a basic level?
SQL injection happens when user input is added directly into a database query, letting an attacker change the query to read or modify data. A tester can enter inputs like a single quote or ' OR '1'='1 in login, search and URL parameters and watch for database errors, unexpected results or a login bypass. Only test in approved environments. The real fix is parameterised queries, not input filtering alone.
Save filters for common views such as my open bugs, bugs ready for retest, blockers in the current sprint and bugs by fix version. Add them to a dashboard with gadgets like pie charts by priority, created versus resolved trend and a sprint bug list. Share the dashboard with the team so status is visible without manual reports. Testers start their day from the ready-for-retest filter.
04
What is the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE?
A test oracle is the source you use to decide whether a test result is correct, that is, the expected result. It can be a requirement document, a user story, an older version of the system, a calculation in a spreadsheet, a domain expert or common sense. For example, when testing a tax calculator, the official tax slab table is the oracle. Without a reliable oracle, you cannot say a test passed or failed.
Cause-effect graphing is a black box technique that models input conditions (causes) and output actions (effects) with logical relations like AND, OR and NOT. The graph is converted into a decision table, and each column becomes a test case. It is useful when outputs depend on combinations of inputs, such as loan approval based on income, age and credit score. It helps find missing or contradictory rules in the requirement.
I agree the split with the team at sprint planning. Testing new stories manually comes first because it blocks the sprint goal. I then automate the stable flows from the previous sprint, so scripts are not rewritten while features change. For example, I block two afternoons a week for automation and report progress in stand-up. If a release is at risk, I pause automation and tell the lead openly.
10
Notifications arrive late, and some screens look broken, only on certain Android phone brands. Why can this happen and what do you test?
Android phone makers ship their own skins and settings on top of Android, so the same app can behave differently. Common problems are aggressive battery savers that kill background tasks and delay notifications, different permission screens, custom fonts and display scaling, camera differences and modified WebViews. Pick devices from the brands most used by your audience and test background work, notifications, camera and layout on each.
11
How do you capture screenshots, videos and traces when an automated test fails?
Most frameworks support this through configuration. In Playwright, set screenshot to only-on-failure, video to retain-on-failure and trace to on-first-retry in the config, then open the trace viewer to step through actions, network calls and the page state. In Selenium, call save_screenshot in a teardown hook when a test fails. Store these artefacts in CI so anyone can debug the failure without rerunning it.
I agree with the goal of faster and more reliable testing, but explain that 100 percent is neither possible nor useful. Exploratory testing, usability, visual judgement and brand-new features need people, and some flows like real payments or OTP are costly to automate reliably. I would propose clear targets instead, such as automating all critical regression and smoke flows, with metrics like regression time cut from three days to four hours.
Defect removal efficiency shows how many defects the team found before release. DRE = defects found before release divided by (defects found before release plus defects found after release), multiplied by 100. If QA found 90 bugs and users reported 10, DRE is 90 percent. A falling DRE means testing is missing more defects, and the escaped bugs should be analysed to improve test coverage.
17
What is a sprint planning meeting and what does QA contribute?
Check that sensitive data like tokens and personal details are not stored in plain text on the device or written to logs. Verify all traffic uses HTTPS and the app rejects invalid certificates. Check session timeout, logout clearing data and that sensitive screens block screenshots if required. Test behaviour on rooted or jailbroken devices if the policy needs it, and that API keys are not visible in the app package.
19
How do you write test cases when only wireframes are available and the UI is not ready?
Use the wireframes and the user story as the test basis. Write test scenarios and high-level cases for the flows, field validations, navigation and error states shown in the design. Note open questions, such as missing empty states or error messages, and clarify them with the designer. Keep exact UI text and steps light so they are easy to update. Once the build arrives, refine the cases and add any missing details.
20
When is manual testing a better choice than automation?
Manual testing is better for exploratory testing, usability and look-and-feel checks, features that change often, one-time tests and early testing of new functionality. Automation pays off for stable, repetitive tests such as regression suites, data-driven checks and smoke tests run on every build. Most teams combine both: manual for discovery and judgement, automation for speed and repeatability.
A test strategy is a high-level document, often at organisation or product level, that defines the general approach: test levels, types, tools, environments, automation approach and standards. It changes rarely. A test plan is project or release specific: scope, schedule, resources, entry and exit criteria, risks and deliverables. The plan follows the strategy and applies it to a particular release.
Feature: Coupon at checkout
Scenario: Valid coupon reduces the total
Given I am logged in with 1000 rupees of items in my cart
And the coupon 'SAVE10' gives 10 percent off
When I apply the coupon 'SAVE10'
Then the discount shown is 100 rupees
And the order total is 900 rupees
Start with low-cost steps. Add an OWASP-based security checklist to the definition of done for stories touching login, payments or personal data. Train testers on access control, injection and session checks. Add automated dependency and vulnerability scans to the CI pipeline. Include negative authorization tests in API suites. Arrange a penetration test before major releases and track security bugs separately with clear severity rules.
A flaky test passes and fails on the same code without any change. Common causes are timing problems such as fixed sleeps or missing waits, tests depending on each other or on shared data, unstable locators, animations, third-party services, test order in parallel runs and environment issues like slow servers. Flaky tests destroy trust in the suite, so teams quarantine them, find the root cause and fix it rather than adding retries forever.
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).
29
What are focus order and visible focus, and how do you test them?
Focus order is the sequence in which keyboard focus moves through interactive elements; it should follow the visual reading order. Visible focus means the focused element clearly shows a ring or highlight. Test by pressing Tab through the page and watching where focus goes. Common bugs are focus jumping to the footer, focus going behind an open dialog and designers removing the outline with CSS, leaving keyboard users lost.
30
What is network condition testing for mobile apps?
It checks app behaviour on different networks: Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G, slow 2G or 3G, high latency, packet loss and no network. Also test switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data in the middle of an action, and airplane mode. The app should show loaders and clear offline messages, retry safely without duplicate actions and not freeze. Network throttling tools in developer options or proxy tools help simulate these conditions.
31
What is the difference between a story, epic, task and bug in JIRA?
A bottleneck is the component that limits the whole system's performance, so adding load beyond it increases response times or errors. Common places are slow database queries or missing indexes, too few database connections or threads, CPU or memory limits on servers, slow third-party APIs, large uncompressed files and chatty code that makes many small calls. Monitoring each layer during a test shows which resource saturates first.
33
What is the difference between smoke testing in CI and full regression?
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.
35
What is ETL testing and how does it relate to database testing?
ETL testing validates data that is Extracted from source systems, Transformed by business rules and Loaded into a target such as a data warehouse. It is a specialised form of database testing. Checks include source-to-target row counts, transformation rules such as currency conversion, handling of NULLs and duplicates, rejected-record logs, incremental loads that pick up only new changes and reconciliation of totals between source and target.
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.
Tips to crack the Zerodha Software Testing interview
Build and share real projects on GitHub, as Zerodha is known to value practical work and open-source contributions.
Read Zerodha Varsity to understand trading, markets and investment concepts in depth.
Learn about Zerodha's tech stack and engineering blog, including its use of Go and open-source tools.
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; Zerodha interviewers usually ask follow-ups on your first answer.
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are there in the Zerodha Software Testing interview?
Candidates usually go through 4 stages: Application review (projects or GitHub); Technical discussion; Assignment or practical task; Founder or team 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 Zerodha Software Testing interview?
This practice set leans on Agile, SQL and API Testing (7), STLC and Test Planning (7), Bug Life Cycle and Jira (6), Performance and Security Basics (4). Revise those first, then practise explaining one or two of your own projects end to end, because most Zerodha interviewers ask you to walk through real work.
Are these the exact questions asked at Zerodha?
No. These are curated practice questions that match the skills and difficulty usually tested in fintech interviews like Zerodha's. They are not a leaked or verified list of past questions.
Where does Zerodha hire Software Testing professionals in India?
Zerodha has large teams in Bengaluru. Openings and locations change often, so check the Zerodha careers page and filter by city and experience.