Skip to contentSkip to footer

Staff Software Qa Engineer Interview Questions

Salaries
Interviews

92 staff software qa engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Round 1 Questions: ============== + What is the difference between NAS and SAN ? - The most basic answer is that NAS is a file storage and SAN is a block storage system . NAS predominatly is either NFS or CIFS protocol(this is a microsoft only protocol , and I havent done much with this at all) ; SAN usually contains Fibre Channel / FCoE and iSCSI elements. ( though an answer like this might be sificient for a phone interview , this is more scope to elaborate ) + Basic Linux commands Questions - + How would you monitor resource consumption on linux ( and variants of this) - commands like top , free , netstat , lsof , iostat , vmstat , ps , pstree , sar are useful for linux questions. the answers generally revolve around one of these. Note : uptime , w and route are useful commands in this situation. If the interviewer is looking for a more complicated way of monitoring ; collectd , Nagios , Cacti , Splunk are some full blown tools for monitoring and capacity planning + How would you test a NFS server ? ( or it was a Web Server ) Round 2 : Onsite interview ==================== Spoke to three engineers in all . Round 2.1 : + Given a python array with numbers like [ 1,4,6,9,10,2,3,14,11] ==> How would you re-arrange it as [1-4,6,9-11,14] (ie) if the array has three or more consecutive number ; club them togather and represent as starting number - ending number ; code and test the same + Given a file , how would you search for a particular string ? - using Grep is a fair start + How would you do it for multiple files in a directory ? + How would you do it for files in multiple machines (the logs are all in the same directory /root/log ) ? Round 2.2 : This was a pretty loaded interview . + Explain the linux boot process ? - The short answer to this question is that , the boot process is divided into three stages ; the BIOS stage , the Bootloaded stage and Kernel stage . In the BIOS stage - the system does a Power On self test and makes sure all the Hardware components are working. And it then scans for the first available bootable disk. In the Bootloader stage - The context of the system is in the boot disk . The boot disk has an MBR ( master boot recond ) and the partition table . The MBR is always on the first sector of the disk ( also called the boot sector). There is enough code in the MBR to load the next part (ie) GRUB - Grand Unified Boot loader . In the kernel stage - the GRUB finds the location of the OS and loads it. link : http://askubuntu.com/questions/173248/where-is-the-bootloader-stored-in-rom-ram-or-elsewhere http://unixbhaskar.blogspot.com/2010/03/insight-into-gnulinux-boot-process.html + In ESX , how would you find resource utilization ? - esxtop + What is the difference between NAS/SAN ? - Discussed multi-pathing in SAN (as a part of major difference) + How to monitor Disk I/O on a linux box ? - SAR and iostats are a couple of interesting tools. ( other interesting tools could be iotop , iodump , dstat ) - or we could cat /proc/diskstats + How would you list all devices on a Linux box ? + What is a HBA ? + What is a iSCSI initiator and a iSCSI target ? + What network load generation tools did you use ? ( totally zoned out for this ) - should have said io tools exert n/w load too , since all storage were remote. Round 2.3 : + How would you test gmail ?
avatar

Member of Technical Staff - QA Automation

Interviewed at Cohesity

3.4★
May 3, 2016

Round 1 Questions: ============== + What is the difference between NAS and SAN ? - The most basic answer is that NAS is a file storage and SAN is a block storage system . NAS predominatly is either NFS or CIFS protocol(this is a microsoft only protocol , and I havent done much with this at all) ; SAN usually contains Fibre Channel / FCoE and iSCSI elements. ( though an answer like this might be sificient for a phone interview , this is more scope to elaborate ) + Basic Linux commands Questions - + How would you monitor resource consumption on linux ( and variants of this) - commands like top , free , netstat , lsof , iostat , vmstat , ps , pstree , sar are useful for linux questions. the answers generally revolve around one of these. Note : uptime , w and route are useful commands in this situation. If the interviewer is looking for a more complicated way of monitoring ; collectd , Nagios , Cacti , Splunk are some full blown tools for monitoring and capacity planning + How would you test a NFS server ? ( or it was a Web Server ) Round 2 : Onsite interview ==================== Spoke to three engineers in all . Round 2.1 : + Given a python array with numbers like [ 1,4,6,9,10,2,3,14,11] ==> How would you re-arrange it as [1-4,6,9-11,14] (ie) if the array has three or more consecutive number ; club them togather and represent as starting number - ending number ; code and test the same + Given a file , how would you search for a particular string ? - using Grep is a fair start + How would you do it for multiple files in a directory ? + How would you do it for files in multiple machines (the logs are all in the same directory /root/log ) ? Round 2.2 : This was a pretty loaded interview . + Explain the linux boot process ? - The short answer to this question is that , the boot process is divided into three stages ; the BIOS stage , the Bootloaded stage and Kernel stage . In the BIOS stage - the system does a Power On self test and makes sure all the Hardware components are working. And it then scans for the first available bootable disk. In the Bootloader stage - The context of the system is in the boot disk . The boot disk has an MBR ( master boot recond ) and the partition table . The MBR is always on the first sector of the disk ( also called the boot sector). There is enough code in the MBR to load the next part (ie) GRUB - Grand Unified Boot loader . In the kernel stage - the GRUB finds the location of the OS and loads it. link : http://askubuntu.com/questions/173248/where-is-the-bootloader-stored-in-rom-ram-or-elsewhere http://unixbhaskar.blogspot.com/2010/03/insight-into-gnulinux-boot-process.html + In ESX , how would you find resource utilization ? - esxtop + What is the difference between NAS/SAN ? - Discussed multi-pathing in SAN (as a part of major difference) + How to monitor Disk I/O on a linux box ? - SAR and iostats are a couple of interesting tools. ( other interesting tools could be iotop , iodump , dstat ) - or we could cat /proc/diskstats + How would you list all devices on a Linux box ? + What is a HBA ? + What is a iSCSI initiator and a iSCSI target ? + What network load generation tools did you use ? ( totally zoned out for this ) - should have said io tools exert n/w load too , since all storage were remote. Round 2.3 : + How would you test gmail ?

Viewing 81 - 90 interview questions

Glassdoor has 92 interview questions and reports from Staff software qa engineer interviews. Prepare for your interview. Get hired. Love your job.