GoHighLevel Interview Experience – Lead SDET | 7 YoE

Experience: 7 Years Current Designation: Lead Automation QA Engineer

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Interview Process Overview

1. Technical Round 1
2. Technical Round 2
3. Technical Round 3
4. Managerial Round

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Round 1 - Automation Exercise + Technical Discussion

Duration: 1 Hour

Panel:

• Lead SDET

Task

Automate a scenario in their application.

Requirements included:

• Create test data through APIs
• Validate the created data in UI
• Perform additional UI actions
• AI tools were explicitly allowed

Discussion Topics

• Framework design decisions
• Scalability considerations
• AI-assisted development
• Framework architecture
• Test design

We also had an interesting discussion around the global AWS outage that was happening at the time and how such incidents impact product reliability, testing strategies, and automation practices.

Experience

One of the nicest interviews I have had.

The interviewer was highly engaged throughout the session. The discussion felt collaborative rather than evaluative, and there was genuine interest in understanding both my technical decisions and thought process.

Verdict

Cleared

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Round 2 - Framework & Leadership Discussion

Duration: 1 Hour

Panel:

• Lead SDET

Topics Covered

Framework Design

• Automation framework architecture
• Framework structure
• Path management
• Element handling strategies

Testing

• Manual testing concepts
• Critical test cases for Add-to-Cart functionality
• Edge cases and coverage discussions

Automation

• Selenium vs Playwright
• CI/CD integration
• Automation lifecycle

Leadership

• Task prioritization
• Managing team conflicts
• Team ownership and delivery

AI

• AI usage in engineering workflows
• Productivity improvements
• Validation of AI-generated code

Resume-Based Discussion

• Previous projects
• Technical decisions
• Team responsibilities

Experience

Another excellent discussion.

The interviewer focused equally on technical depth, testing fundamentals, automation strategy, and leadership responsibilities. The conversation felt natural and allowed sufficient time to explain decisions and experiences.

Verdict

Cleared

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Round 3 - Advanced Automation & Leadership

Duration: 1 Hour

Panel:

• Lead SDET

Topics Covered

• Playwright framework architecture
• MCP
• Team management
• Mentoring engineers
• Handling flaky tests
• Reliability engineering
• Automation scalability

Practical Exercise

Implement functionality similar to JsonDiff.

Experience

This round focused heavily on senior-level engineering and leadership expectations.

There were detailed discussions around framework architecture, mentoring team members, improving automation reliability, and scaling quality engineering practices.

Like the previous rounds, the discussion was highly engaging and constructive.

Verdict

Cleared

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Round 4 - Managerial Round

Duration: 1 Hour

Panel:

• QA Director
• Senior Manager

Topics Covered

• Resume walkthrough
• GitLab CI
• Deployment strategies
• Performance testing
• Playwright ecosystem
• Framework design

Questions Asked

1. Explain your CI/CD experience.
2. Discuss GitLab CI implementation in your current organization.
3. Deployment strategies you have worked with.
4. Performance testing experience.
5. Alternative approaches to TestNG listeners in Playwright.

Experience

This round was scheduled as a managerial discussion, but the majority of the conversation remained technical.

Several questions focused on areas that were either already covered in earlier rounds or outside my primary responsibilities. For example, performance testing was discussed despite my clarification that a dedicated performance engineering team handled those activities in my organization.

While discussing GitLab CI, portions of the discussion shifted toward comparisons with GitHub workflows.

One challenge I faced during this round was the limited opportunity to fully explain answers before the discussion moved to the next topic.

Additionally, there were multiple moments during the discussion where the QA Director appeared disengaged from the conversation and did not seem to be actively following some of the responses being provided. This made meaningful discussion difficult and stood in contrast to the highly engaged interviewers from the previous three rounds.

For a final-round managerial interview, I expected a higher level of engagement and a more structured two-way discussion. The contrast between this round and the previous three rounds was significant.

Verdict

Rejected

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Feedback

The feedback communicated was that my skills and experience did not align with the expectations for the Lead SDET role.

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Reflection

The final outcome was somewhat surprising given that three technical rounds had already been completed successfully before reaching the managerial discussion.

In hindsight, having the managerial evaluation earlier in the process could potentially have helped both sides determine role fit sooner and reduced the time investment involved in completing three technical rounds before receiving feedback related to role alignment.