Experience: 7 Years
Current Designation: Lead Automation QA Engineer
Interview Process Overview
- Technical Round 1
- Technical Round 2
- Technical Round 3
- Managerial Round
Round 1 – Automation Exercise + Technical Discussion
Duration: 1 Hour
Panel:
- Lead SDET
Task
Automate a scenario in their application.
Requirements included:
- Create test data through APIs
- Validate the created data in UI
- Perform additional UI actions
- AI tools were explicitly allowed
Discussion Topics
- Framework design decisions
- Scalability considerations
- AI-assisted development
- Framework architecture
- Test design
We also had an interesting discussion around the global AWS outage that was happening at the time and how such incidents impact product reliability, testing strategies, and automation practices.
Experience
One of the nicest interviews I have had.
The interviewer was highly engaged throughout the session. The discussion felt collaborative rather than evaluative, and there was genuine interest in understanding both my technical decisions and thought process.
Verdict
✅ Cleared
Round 2 – Framework & Leadership Discussion
Duration: 1 Hour
Panel:
- Lead SDET
Topics Covered
Framework Design
- Automation framework architecture
- Framework structure
- Path management
- Element handling strategies
Testing
- Manual testing concepts
- Critical test cases for Add-to-Cart functionality
- Edge cases and coverage discussions
Automation
- Selenium vs Playwright
- CI/CD integration
- Automation lifecycle
Leadership
- Task prioritization
- Managing team conflicts
- Team ownership and delivery
AI
- AI usage in engineering workflows
- Productivity improvements
- Validation of AI-generated code
Resume-Based Discussion
- Previous projects
- Technical decisions
- Team responsibilities
Experience
Another excellent discussion.
The interviewer focused equally on technical depth, testing fundamentals, automation strategy, and leadership responsibilities. The conversation felt natural and allowed sufficient time to explain decisions and experiences.
Verdict
✅ Cleared
Round 3 – Advanced Automation & Leadership
Duration: 1 Hour
Panel:
- Lead SDET
Topics Covered
- Playwright framework architecture
- MCP
- Team management
- Mentoring engineers
- Handling flaky tests
- Reliability engineering
- Automation scalability
Practical Exercise
Implement functionality similar to JsonDiff.
Experience
This round focused heavily on senior-level engineering and leadership expectations.
There were detailed discussions around framework architecture, mentoring team members, improving automation reliability, and scaling quality engineering practices.
Like the previous rounds, the discussion was highly engaging and constructive.
Verdict
✅ Cleared
Round 4 – Managerial Round
Duration: 1 Hour
Panel:
- QA Director
- Senior Manager
Topics Covered
- Resume walkthrough
- GitLab CI
- Deployment strategies
- Performance testing
- Playwright ecosystem
- Framework design
Questions Asked
- Explain your CI/CD experience.
- Discuss GitLab CI implementation in your current organization.
- Deployment strategies you have worked with.
- Performance testing experience.
- Alternative approaches to TestNG listeners in Playwright.
Experience
This round was scheduled as a managerial discussion, but the majority of the conversation remained technical.
Several questions focused on areas that were either already covered in earlier rounds or outside my primary responsibilities. For example, performance testing was discussed despite my clarification that a dedicated performance engineering team handled those activities in my organization.
While discussing GitLab CI, portions of the discussion shifted toward comparisons with GitHub workflows.
One challenge I faced during this round was the limited opportunity to fully explain answers before the discussion moved to the next topic.
Additionally, there were multiple moments during the discussion where the QA Director appeared disengaged from the conversation and did not seem to be actively following some of the responses being provided. This made meaningful discussion difficult and stood in contrast to the highly engaged interviewers from the previous three rounds.
For a final-round managerial interview, I expected a higher level of engagement and a more structured two-way discussion. The contrast between this round and the previous three rounds was significant.
Verdict
❌ Rejected
Feedback
The feedback communicated was that my skills and experience did not align with the expectations for the Lead SDET role.
Reflection
The final outcome was somewhat surprising given that three technical rounds had already been completed successfully before reaching the managerial discussion.
In hindsight, having the managerial evaluation earlier in the process could potentially have helped both sides determine role fit sooner and reduced the time investment involved in completing three technical rounds before receiving feedback related to role alignment.