IT services
TCS
Fundamentals, manual-to-automation, and client-project stories.
These are our own practice questions for the kind of QA/SDET role this company hires for. They are not the company's real interview questions. Confirm the current process on the company's official careers page.
What they tend to probe
- Testing fundamentals
- Selenium with Java
- SQL
- Agile ceremonies
- Defect lifecycle
Question 1 · Fundamentals · Easy
Walk me through the defect life cycle and who owns each state.
Answer guide
New, assigned, open, fixed, retest, verified, closed; plus reopened, deferred, rejected, duplicate. Say who moves it (tester, dev lead, triage) and where a severity vs priority call happens.
Likely follow-up: Give an example where severity was high but priority low.
Question 2 · Test design · Easy
A bank's fund-transfer screen has amount, from-account and to-account. Design test cases using equivalence partitioning and boundary value analysis.
Answer guide
Valid and invalid partitions for amount (zero, negative, min, max, over balance, decimals). Boundaries at min-1, min, min+1, max-1, max, max+1. Same account both sides. Mention daily limit.
Question 3 · Selenium · Medium
Your Selenium test passes locally and fails in the Jenkins job. List the causes you would check, in order.
Answer guide
Environment and data differences, headless viewport size, timing (explicit waits), browser/driver version, parallel runs sharing state, test order dependence. Say how you would reproduce it before changing code.
Likely follow-up: What would you log to make the next failure obvious?
Question 4 · SQL · Medium
Two tables: orders(id, customer_id, amount) and customers(id, name). Return customers with no orders, and the top 3 customers by total amount.
Answer guide
LEFT JOIN with IS NULL (or NOT EXISTS) for the first. GROUP BY with SUM, ORDER BY DESC, LIMIT 3 for the second. Mention ties and NULL amounts.
Question 5 · Process · Medium
Your client changes a requirement two days before UAT. How do you respond as the QA lead?
Answer guide
Impact analysis on test cases and automation, tell the PM the risk in plain terms, re-prioritise by risk, agree what is retested and what is accepted risk, update the traceability matrix. Show you escalate early, not late.
Question 6 · Framework · Hard
Explain how you would structure a Selenium framework for a team of eight working on three modules.
Answer guide
Page objects, a thin base layer, config per environment, test data strategy, reporting, retry policy that does not hide bugs, CI trigger, naming and code review rules. Say what you would NOT build on day one.
Likely follow-up: How do you stop the suite becoming slow?