Senior Software Engineer Interview Questions | EPAM Anywhere

9. What is a testing pyramid?

The testing pyramid is a model that categorizes software testing into three forms. This assists quality assurance and development experts in ensuring improved quality, reducing the time required to uncover the underlying cause of errors, and developing a more dependable testing system.

There are three layers in the testing pyramid. The pyramid’s base is used for unit testing, the middle stage is used for integration testing, and the top and final layer is for user interface and exploratory testing.

10. Explain the process of end-to-end testing

End-to-end testing is a software testing approach that evaluates the complete software from start to finish, including its integration with other interfaces.

End-to-end testing considers the complete software for dependencies, data integrity, and connectivity with other systems, databases, and interfaces to simulate a complete production environment.

It checks batch and data processing from various upstream and downstream systems and the software system, which is how the approach gets the name “end-to-end.” End-to-end testing is often performed following functional and system testing.

It simulates real-time conditions by using genuine production data and a testing environment. End-to-end testing is also known as chain testing.

11. What are the benefits of TDD over BDD?

Test Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD) have their own merits and demerits. When comparing the two, TDD beats BDD when it comes to:

• Projects that involve API and third-party tools

• Projects that are meant to reduce the likelihood of finding bugs during testing
• Projects where tests have to satisfy just the developer and their code, in contrast to BDD, where the tests have to satisfy both the developer and customer

Agile-led teams have widely adopted test-driven development, and there are many different tools to help teams get on the same page. Unfortunately, there are fewer tools for behavior-driven development since it involves communication between business and technical teams.

12. What security standards do you know?

Application security (AppSec) is now critical to ensuring business continuity. While security is never synonymous with compliance, you should be familiar with the following application security standards to offer you minimal baselines for implementing best practices:

• International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27034
• Center for Internet Security (CIS) Control 16: Application Software Security
• Payment Card Industry (PCI) Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS)
• OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS)
• National Institute of Technologies (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800–218 (DRAFT)
• CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration)
• MISRA-C (Motor Industry Software Reliability Association) for the C programming language.
• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
• The Web Application Security Consortium (WASC)

13. How do you prevent sensitive data exposure?

Sensitive data is highly confidential information that has to be kept secure and unavailable to those without authorization. Sensitive data comprises information such as people’s home addresses, salaries, customer data, credit/debit card data, and information that should be protected in case of a data breach.You can prevent exposure by:

• Deleting all sensitive data once it has served its purpose
• Encrypting all the sensitive data you hold
• Using security testing tools to catch issues early
• Predicting the threats you may face and preparing for or defending against them
• Disabling caching and autocomplete forms that contain or collect sensitive background information
• Using cloud services like KeyVault in Azure or KMS in AWS
• Using strong passwords and ciphers
• Classifying data

14. Name OWASP Top 10 Security Flaws

The OWASP Top 10 is a solid starting point when building secure code. A significant percentage of apps have a security issue that falls in the OWASP Top 10. They include:

1. Injection
2. Sensitive data exposure
3. Broken authentication
4. Broken access control
5. XXE injection
6. Security misconfiguration
7. Insecure deserialization
8. Cross-site scripting
9. Insufficient logging and monitoring
10. Using components with known vulnerabilities

15. When is it best to apply SAFe?

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) is usually best applied when:

• There are no other agility transformation efforts underway.
• You prefer genuine change over cosmetic changes.
• A release cycle of 10–12 weeks is appropriate.
• Hardware or other products with long lead times (up to 10 weeks) need to be integrated with items with shorter lead times.
• There is no desire to downsize the organization.
• There is no desire to create a Lean/Agile organization with solely Lean/Agile positions at various levels, such as Architecture Owner, Flow Manager, and Product Owner.
• Kanban is utilized at all levels because it is implemented at the team level.
• You want to enhance team performance, be comfortable, and be ready to become agile.
• DevOps is completely accepted, and test automation is an integral element of how the company operates.
• Everyone impacted by SAFe receives a formal SAFe® training. SAFe is documented, but mentality change is required, which may be accomplished through in-class instruction.
• Product Owners are completely empowered and no position undermines their function.

16. Name and explain Scrum roles

There are three main Scrum roles. They include:

• Scrum Master, ensuring that a Scrum team operates as efficiently as possible by following Scrum ideals, keeping the team on course, preparing and conducting meetings, and resolving any roadblocks that may arise.
• Scrum Product Owner, ensuring that the Scrum team is on the same page as the overarching product goals. They comprehend the product’s commercial requirements, such as consumer expectations and industry trends.
• Development Team, comprising experts who do the work in a Scrum sprint on the ground. This implies that members of the development team span any skill set required to meet sprint objectives.

17. Have you ever had to introduce a new process at work? What approach did you take to gain cooperation?

Whatever it was you introduced, the methods of gaining cooperation tend to stay the same:

• Communicate clearly why the change is necessary.
• Have the backing of the leadership and key figures within the organization.
• Adapt the learning material to fit the employees’ needs.
• Use visual aids to help speed up the adoption of your new processes.
• Share any documentation where relevant or necessary.
• Make sure the employees don’t feel pressured to succeed or fear failure.

18. Describe a situation where you successfully convinced others of your ideas

Whenever you have to convince others of an idea in a workplace, there are some steps to take:

• Do favors for others, especially when they do not ask much of you, and you’ll have willing listeners when you pitch ideas.
• Establish what your goals are, so others see something to focus on.
• Initiate a dialogue with the people most affected by changes the idea may bring.
• Use reliable sources to guide your idea.
• Prepare what you want to say or implement beforehand to grab your audience’s attention and keep it during your pitch.
• Show your audience what the outcome will be, so they have an incentive to want what you are suggesting.

There are more ways to convince people of your ideas, and they should all be leveraged appropriately to push for change.