SOFTWARE

ENGINEER
IN TEST
A Preparatory Guide
 WHAT TO EXPECT
AND HOW TO
PREPARE

If you are interviewing with Freshworks, this document will guide you through what to expect so you
feel well informed and have a positive interview experience.

At Freshworks, extraordinary people together solve some of the most complex challenges of the
working world and make it better. You’ll find the right opportunities to focus your intelligence and
imagination, and would design and deliver crucial products and services, to clients and customers,
across the globe.

We hope this guide helps you prepare and wish you the very best!

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 GENERAL TIPS
• To begin with, pursue the role-specific Job Description (JD), to ensure that your skills and job
aspirations align with the role and expectations at Freshworks.
• At all levels, interviews would be interested in understanding your approach to problem solving.
• Generally, you could be asked to solve a problem in any way you choose, and then the interviewer
could add further constraints or requirements.
• Brush up on your fundamentals like data structures, algorithms, OOPS concepts and Design
patterns. Be able to discuss the big-O complexity of your approaches.
• It is not always about the solution, but also, how you get to it. Gives the interviewer insight into
your thinking process and can also help them follow along with your solution
• Be prepared for Design questions on current projects and understanding decisions taken.
• Talk through your thought process about the questions you are asked. Interviews, our engineers
are evaluating not only your technical abilities but also how you approach problems and try to
solve them.
• Ask clarifying questions if you do not understand the problem or need more information.
• Take time to compose and talk through a more efficient solution rather than jump into coding.

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 ROUNDS OF
INTERVIEW
The interview process itself will be divided into
4 rounds – 3 Technical, & a HR Round.

Round 1
Automation & Programming

Round 2
QA

Round 3
Overall Technical fit

Round 4
Hiring Manager Round

Round 5
HR

*Progression between levels are subject to feedback at each stage

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 ROUND 1
Automation & Programming

Coding:
Although this is a face to face interview and you will be asked to write code in a piece of paper
or on a shared document virtually (as the case may be), please make sure it’s a compilable
code and is most optimised. Also be aware of what cases would break your code.
You will be expected to display your skills and understanding of the following,
• In the programming language of your domain,
- Strings, Arrays, Collections (Hash & List), Stack & Queues, Search & Sorting
- Algorithms, Variable scopes
- Design Patterns (should be able to solve automation problems using any of design
pattern (Preferably - Singleton, Factory, Builder)
- OOPS, among others.
• Coding
- Medium Hackerrank tests (Array, Collections related problems)
- Time complexity, etc.
• SVN (Git/ Perforce/ Bitbucket)

Automation:
You will be expected to display your skills and understanding of the following

• Selenium
- End to End selenium
- POM
- Data driven/ Keyword driven
- Cross Browser
- Iframes
- Multiple window handling, etc.
• API
- Return Codes
- Serialisation & Deserialization of Payloads (JSON / XML)
- Authentications
- HTTP Methods, API Validations

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 • TestRunners (Junit/ Rspec/ TestNG)
- Parallel Execution
- Assertions
- Listeners
- Data Providers
- Reports
- Test case grouping, etc
• CI / CD Tools (Jenkins)
• WebApp
- System Level understanding of web application, MVC, Database
• Mobile
- Android / IOS Platform architecture
- Application layer understaging
- Mobile automation frameworks (Appium)
- Unit Test Frameworks like XCUITest, Expresso, Robot class framework

ROUND 2
QA

You will be expected to display your skills and understanding of the following,

• Use Case and Test Case Identification

• Test Coverage (Positive, Negative, Boundary, Edge, Corner, etc)
• Test Severity and Priority
• Types of Testing (functional / Non-functional, Blackbox / Whitebox, Security)
• Fault Isolation (Debugging and Troubleshooting)
• Test Planning, Test Estimation, Test Reporting
• Understanding Test Environment, Release Process
• Test Environment, Dependency Management, Test case Management
• SDLC, STLC

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 ROUND 3
Overall Technical Fit

We are looking to hire candidates who can operate as leaders. In that essence, we are looking
at someone who has an overall understanding of the code. Please prepare to talk on the
following as well.

• Impact of your code in the overall SDLC

• Understand the impact of the code in the QA phase. What are the best coding practises
that would ask the readability (Commenting, space and other code quality) of the code
easier in the QA phase
• How does your current application get deployed? Following are some examples to assess
your knowledge depth in deployment.
- What is your current code Coverage
- How many machines do you use in deployment
- Is the application stateless

ROUND 4
Hiring Manager Round

Be prepared to discuss on technology: awareness and exposure, Career interests and team-fit.

ROUND 5
HR

Be prepared to talk about your Career interests and this round is also to understand culture,
team and organisation fitment.

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 TIPS TO ACE THE

• Be yourself! Be open and honest about your

successes and failures.
INTERVIEW:

• Familiarize yourself with our core values, and let

us know how you would fit in.
• We love passionate people, who are relentless in
their pursuit for learning and growth. Let us in on
your aspirations!

For any further questions please feel free to reach out to your recruiter.
Contact coordinates will be listed in their signature.

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ABOUT FRESHWORKS
Freshworks provides innovative customer engagement software for businesses of all sizes,
making it easy for teams to acquire, close and keep their customers for life. Freshworks SaaS
products provide a 360-degree view of the customer, are ready to go, easy to use and offer
quick return on investment. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Freshworks’ 3,100+
team members work in offices throughout the world.

Growth
We started with 6 members building Freshdesk, the product. Today, we have a
large team of empowered and talented individuals with more than 3100 employees
across the globe working to create a billion $ tech product company.

Location
While we are adding more offices and are scaling worldwide, our Engineering
teams are growing rapidly in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Vision Mission
Enabling every business to Enabling every team to deliver
create customers for life. moments of WOW.

Our Milestones
• Crossed $100M in ARR in June 2018
• Doubled ARR in 18 months – Crossed $200M in May 2020
• Freshworks Ranks 16 in Forbes Cloud 100 List - 2020
• Acquisitions - 13

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 Our culture goals: “CHAT”

Craftsmanship Happy “Work” Environment

Agility Through Empowerment True Friend of the Customer

Know more about us

Culture Humans at Freshworks

Blogs Engineering

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Media
▶ Freshworks Ranks 16 in Forbes Cloud 100 List - 2020
▶ How a simple comment on Hacker News motivated me to resign from my comfortable well
paying job and launch my own startup by Girish Mathrubootham - the founding story.
▶ Freshworks Joins the Unicorn Club
▶ Going global from India - NASSCOM Product Conclave keynote by Girish Mathrubootham -
our initial days and business philosophy.
▶ The surprising place to find your business idea - Interview with Girish Mathrubootham by
Mixergy - an overview of journey as well as touching some aspects of our business.
▶ Assembling a rockstar team to build a global product - YourStory MobileSparks keynote by
Girish Mathrubootham - insight into our culture and how we hire.
▶ Ask Me Anything with Girish Mathrubootham hosted by Tech In Asia
▶ Ask Me Anything with Girish Mathrubootham hosted by YourStory
▶ The making of Girish Mathrubootham - FactorDaily’s piece chronicling the life of Freshworks’
founder. This is less FW, mostly Girish (we call him G fondly).
▶ How to build a large startup that’s not in Silicon Valley with Girish Mathrubootham -
antithesis to the valley companies and how we are going against traditional norms.

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