The screening call
This round is checking basic fit and communication, not depth — can you clearly explain your current role and a project you're proud of, without over-explaining or under-explaining. Interviewers are also quietly checking for red flags (badmouthing a previous employer, vague answers about what you actually did vs. what your team did).
The coding round
For a senior SDET, this usually isn't a pure algorithms round — it's checking whether you write clean, testable code and can reason about edge cases out loud. Expect string/array manipulation, sometimes a small design problem (design a rate limiter, design a simple cache) rather than a hard algorithmic puzzle. What's being evaluated: do you clarify requirements before coding, do you consider edge cases unprompted, and is your code something a teammate could review and extend.
The automation/framework round
This is where seniority actually gets tested. Expect questions like "walk me through how you'd design a framework from scratch for this app" or "here's a flaky test — how do you debug it." Interviewers are listening for: do you think in layers (page objects, fixtures, data, config) rather than one big script, do you have real experience with the trade-offs (parallel execution, CI integration, flakiness root-causing), and can you justify a design decision rather than just naming a pattern.
The system design round
Increasingly common for senior/lead SDET roles — not full backend system design, but testing-strategy design: "how would you test this distributed system," "how would you design a test data strategy for a multi-tenant app," "how would you approach performance testing for this service." The signal here is whether you can reason about a testing strategy at the same level of abstraction a senior engineer reasons about system architecture.
The behavioral/leadership round
For senior roles, this goes beyond "tell me about a challenge" — expect questions about mentoring, influencing without authority (getting developers to actually own quality, not just QA), and handling disagreement with engineering leadership about release readiness. Prepare 2-3 real stories in STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) that specifically demonstrate ownership and influence, not just individual technical contribution.
The HR/compensation round
Straightforward logistics — notice period, compensation expectations, start date — but still worth preparing: know your market-rate range beforehand, and be ready to discuss it as a range grounded in research, not a guess.
The one thing that matters across every round
At the senior level, interviewers are consistently listening for ownership language ("I designed," "I decided," "I pushed back and here's why") rather than passive language ("we did," "it was decided"). Preparing specific, ownership-framed examples ahead of time — not just brushing up on syntax — is what actually moves the needle in a senior SDET loop.