Equall (LTCV Credit) Interview Experience – SDET 3 | 7 YoE
Experience: 7 Years
Current Designation: Lead Automation QA Engineer
Role Applied: SDET 3
Applied Through: Instahyre
Interview Process Overview
- Engineering Head Discussion
- Technical Evaluation
- Take-Home Assignment
- Onsite Discussion (Scheduled but not completed)
Round 1 – Engineering Head Discussion
Duration: 30 Minutes
Panel:
- Engineering Head (10–15+ Years of Experience)
Questions Asked
- Walk me through your professional experience.
- Discussion around previous companies and responsibilities.
- Reason for looking for a change.
- Discussion on AI-assisted coding tools.
- Auto-healing concepts in test automation.
- General discussion around automation practices and industry trends.
Experience
The interview started slightly late as the interviewer was unable to join the scheduled meeting initially. After I sent a reminder email, he joined the call and apologized for the delay.
The discussion was informal and conversational. We spoke about my career journey, automation experience, industry trends, AI-assisted development tools, and auto-healing capabilities in modern automation frameworks.
Overall, it felt more like an exploratory discussion than a traditional interview.
Verdict
✅ Cleared
Round 2 – Technical Evaluation
Duration: Scheduled for 1 Hour
Panel:
- Backend Developer (10+ Years of Experience)
Process
This interview was rescheduled twice at short notice before eventually taking place.
The interviewer joined late and quickly moved into the assessment.
Tasks Given
- Register on the company's loan application platform.
- Navigate through the application and reach the customer support ticket section.
- Write Selenium or Playwright automation code for the identified workflow.
- Share the implementation and explain the approach.
Experience
The session was highly task-oriented with minimal discussion. After a brief introduction, the focus shifted directly to exploring the product and automating the identified workflow.
The interview concluded significantly earlier than the scheduled duration. There were also a few interruptions during the session, which made the interaction feel less structured than expected.
Verdict
✅ Cleared
Take-Home Assignment
Following the technical round, I was given a take-home assignment with a submission timeline of 3 days.
Assignment Requirements
Build a complete automation framework for Swiggy using the automation tool of your choice.
Expected capabilities included:
- Fully functional automation framework
- Automation of a specified user flow
- Location mocking support
- Network/API mocking
- Custom reporting
- Reusable utilities and helper modules
- Scalable framework architecture
- Maintainable project structure
Time Investment
The assignment required a significant amount of effort and was closer to building a production-ready automation framework than completing a standard coding exercise.
Experience
The focus was not only on automating a specific workflow but also on demonstrating engineering practices, framework architecture, extensibility, and maintainability.
Having prior experience designing automation frameworks and using AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor helped accelerate development considerably. Without those tools, the assignment would likely have required substantially more time.
After submission, I was invited for an onsite interview to discuss the implementation and proceed with the remaining evaluation process.
Verdict
✅ Cleared
Onsite Interview Scheduling
After successfully completing the assignment, an onsite interview was scheduled.
At that time, I was actively interviewing with multiple companies and already had several online interviews planned. Attending the onsite interview would have required cancelling other scheduled interviews, so I requested a postponement.
The company accommodated the request and rescheduled the interview. However, I ended up postponing it for more than a week.
On the morning of the rescheduled onsite interview, HR informed me that another candidate had accepted the offer and the position had been closed.
Final Outcome
❌ Position Closed
Reflection
In hindsight, this outcome was largely influenced by my decision to postpone the onsite interview multiple times.
The company was flexible with scheduling requests, but the hiring process continued in parallel with other candidates. This experience reinforced the importance of balancing multiple interview processes carefully, especially when opportunities are already in advanced stages.
Overall Experience
Difficulty Level
Easy to Medium
The interview rounds themselves were relatively straightforward. The most demanding part of the process was the take-home assignment, which required building a comprehensive automation framework with several advanced capabilities.
Candidates with prior framework development experience will likely find the assignment manageable. Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools can also significantly reduce implementation time.