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mediumQA Engineer interview question

Your team wants to start test automation. Which tests would you automate first and which would you keep manual?

What the interviewer wants to hear

  • Automate stable, repetitive, high-value regression tests
  • Automate smoke tests for every build
  • Prefer API-level tests where possible
  • Keep exploratory, usability and rapidly changing features manual
  • Consider return on investment and maintenance cost

Model answer

I would automate tests with the best return for the effort. First, a smoke suite for critical flows like login, search and checkout, running on every build. Then regression tests that we repeat every release and that rarely change, such as tax calculations or account settings. Where possible I would automate at the API level, because API tests are faster and more stable than UI tests, and keep only a small number of end-to-end UI journeys. Data-heavy checks, like testing a calculation with 50 input combinations, are also great for automation. I would keep manual work for exploratory testing, usability and visual judgement, and for features still changing every sprint, because automating them now means constant rework. I would also plan maintenance time, since a flaky or outdated suite quickly loses the team's trust.

Can you answer it under time pressure?

Take a timed medium round and get scored on every answer.

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