Interviews may be a terrific time to show hiring managers your personality, learn more about a career, and explain your abilities and expertise. It is generally good to examine typical interview questions when preparing for a software engineering interview. This may help you prepare your replies and create the greatest possible first impression on your interviewers. This essay explores typical software engineer interview questions and presents some sample replies.
This isn’t as tough as it appears, if you are prepared well enough your confidence will take over your nervousness. So, to make sure that you prepare well before your interview, we have got a few questions that you might be asked and their answers. Knowing how you should answer would help you be confident in your interviews and thus increase the chances of moving ahead to the technical interview.
When you apply initially, the questions that will be asked to you could be divided into two main categories, behavioral and technical questions.
The behavioral questions are supposed to test your character and help the interviewer understand who you are as a person.
Technical questions, on the other hand, will help the recruiter gauge your technical understanding of the principles of Software Engineering.
Behavioral Questions
Why Software Engineer?
If you are applying for the development role for the first time or switching careers, the chances of you being asked this question are very high. The answer to this question helps the interviewer understand what drives you as a professional, i.e. the motivational source of your creation. If it is the salary, you should definitely mention that and along with it, you can also mention your love for computers, or your passion for engineering, etc.
Just make sure that your passion for the job is visible as you speak. Try talking about the problems that you love solving, and how much success as a software engineer would mean to you on a personal level.
Then, depending upon the role that you have applied for, you could talk about the front or back-end development.
Tell us about one of your projects and elaborate on how you chose its architecture
This question is intended to understand how you use technology to meet organizational challenges. Here you can talk about:
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If there was a high-level objective that was addressed by the project.
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You could give the details about the architecture you chose, which could include design choices of MERN as opposed to MEAN or something of the sort.
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You could talk about the servers and the network structure.
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If there were any unexpected adjustments to technology or design that you had to make, you could mention them.
Technical Questions
Q 1) What is SDLC?
Answer: SDLC stands for Software Development Life Cycle. It outlines the step-by-step strategy for the creation of software. SDLC comprises the following stages, i.e. Requirement Gathering, System Analysis, Design, Coding, Testing, Maintenance, and Documentation.
Q 2) What are the many models available in SDLC?
Answer: There are numerous models accessible in SDLC for effectively carrying out software development. Some of the models include the Waterfall model, V-Model, Agile model, etc.
Q 3) Explain the word Baseline.
Answer: A baseline is a milestone in the project which the project manager generally specifies. Baselines are used to monitor the project's progress from time to time to evaluate the overall health of the project.
Q 4) What are the duties of a Software Project Manager?
Answer: A Software Project Manager is responsible for guiding the project towards its conclusion. The job of the Software Project Manager is to ensure that the whole team follows a systematic and well-defined strategy for the development of software.
A software project manager is also responsible for the following tasks:
- Project planning
- Project status tracking
- Resource management
- Risk management
- Project delivery within schedule and budget.
Q 5) What is Cohesion?
Answer: Cohesion is the degree to which the parts of a module are interrelated to one another. It is like an internal glue that connects the pieces of a module. Good software has high degrees of cohesiveness.
Q 6) What is Coupling?
Answer: Coupling is the degree of dependency between the modules. Good software has minimal degrees of coupling.
Q 7) Explain the notion of Modularization.
Answer: Modularization is used to break software into various components or modules. Each module is worked upon by a separate development and testing team. The end outcome would be integrating many modules into a single operational component.
Q 8) What is Software Configuration Management?
Answer: Software configuration management is the practice of tracking and regulating changes throughout the software development lifecycle. Any change made during software development needs to be monitored via a well-defined and regulated procedure. Configuration management guarantees that all modifications made during software development are managed via a well-defined methodology.
Q 9) What are the different stages of SDLC?
Answer: The following are the most prevalent stages of SDLC.
- Requirement Analysis
- Design
- Coding
- Testing
- Maintenance
Q 10) Provide examples of Project Management tools.
Answer: Below is some of the most regularly utilized project management solutions accessible in the market today.
- Gantt Chart
- Checklists
- Status Reports
- Histograms
- Microsoft Project
Q 11) What are CASE tools?
Answer: CASE stands for Computer-Aided Software Engineering technologies employed to assist and expedite the different operations of the Software Development Lifecycle.
Q 12) What is Black box testing?
Answer: Black box testing entails testing the application without knowing the underlying structure or code implementation. Testers would only be concerned about the program's functionality in black box testing rather than data flow and code execution at the back end.
Q 13) What is White box testing?
Answer: White box testing tests the application with the knowledge of the underlying structure and code implementation. This testing is often conducted by the developer who has created the code in unit tests.
Q 14) What is a Feasibility Study?
Answer: A feasibility study is done on a software product to examine how natural and valuable the software product is to the company. Software is studied carefully to understand the economic and technological elements of a software product to be built.
Q 15) How can you measure Project execution
Answer: Project execution status may be tracked using the following ways.
- Status Reports
- Milestone checklists
- Activity Monitoring
Q 16) What are the Functional Requirements?
Answer: Functional requirements are the characteristics that a built software product must accomplish. For example, providing a payment option at an eCommerce website will be a functional necessity.
Q 17) What are Non-Functional Requirements?
Answer: Non-functional requirements assess the program's usefulness, such as User Interface look and feel, Security, Performance, Interoperability, Reliability, etc.
Q 18) What is the difference between Quality Assurance and Quality Control?
Answer: Quality Assurance involves ensuring that the given software has the least amount of flaws feasible. Quality Control is the process of ensuring that the quality of the product is maintained in the long term.
The testing team of the project does quality Assurance. In contrast, Quality Control is generally done by a specialized support staff, who is accountable for the quality of the product even if the product is in the maintenance phase of software engineering.
Q 19) What is the difference between Verification and Validation?
Answer: Verification is the process of confirming that the product is created appropriately from a process and standards standpoint. Validation is the process of verifying that we produce the right product from a customer viewpoint.
Verification is a static testing process whereby the product is verified without running the code, whereas validation is a dynamic testing methodology.
Q 20) Which SDLC model is the best to use for a Software Product?
Answer: No guidelines say which exact SDLC model needs to be utilized for a software application. It depends on the software project being produced and the organization's rules & processes.
Q 21) What do you mean by Software Scope?
Answer: Program scope is the functionality given by the produced software. Based on the program's scope, estimates such as time allocation, budget and resource allocation may be done.
Q 22) What is SRS?
Answer: SRS stands for Software Requirement Specification (SRS) document. It is a document to capture all the functional and non-functional needs of a product. Not all SDLC models need to follow SRS papers; some models record requirements in user stories, whilst other models in the form of excel sheets, etc.
Q 23) What SDLC model have utilized you in your last project?
Answer: The answer to this question relies on the experience of an interview applicant.
If the applicant answers the SDLC model to be the Waterfall model, then the interviewer will start asking questions about the Waterfall model. If he answers it to be Agile, the interviewer will begin questioning terminology relating to the Agile approach such as Scrum, Sprint, etc.
Q 24) Explain the Waterfall model in detail.
Answer: The waterfall model is a sequential model in which the next phase begins only when the previous step is finished. For example, the testing phase will start only after the development phase is complete, the maintenance phase will begin only after the testing phase is complete.
Below are the many steps involved in the waterfall model.
- Requirements
- Design
- Coding
- Testing
- Maintenance
a) Requirements: This is the phase when the system to be created is described in the form of a Software Requirement Specification (SRS) document. This is the most crucial step of SDLC since a good knowledge of requirements from the customer will minimize the rework in the subsequent stages.
b) Design: This is when the architecture of the system to be created is finalized. Architecture might be in the form of a high-level or low-level design. Architecture must also comprise the hardware and software specs of the system to be constructed.
c) Coding: This is when the code for the system to be created is written. The developers must conduct unit Testing and Integration Testing before releasing the code for testing.
d) Testing: This is the phase when the product generated is tested by an independent testing team to check whether it fits the criteria in the Software Requirement Specification (SRS). Defects reported at this step need to be corrected before granting a sign off on the product.
e) Maintenance: This step happens once the testing phase is complete. It takes care of any manufacturing concerns that may develop after the product is delivered to the consumer. The length of the maintenance phase changes from project to project from one organization to another.
Q 25) Explain V-Model in detail.
Answer: V-Model stands for the verification and validation model. V-model is an addition to the waterfall model because V-model is also a sequential model. In V-model, each development step is coupled with a matching testing phase.
Within the V-Model, SDLC is to be interpreted from top to bottom, whereas STLC is to be interpreted from the bottom to the top. Initially, requirements are obtained to document the system to be constructed according to customer needs. The testing team designs the system test strategy based on the requirements.
Then follows the high-level design and the detailed level design stages when the system's architecture is prepared. The testing team develops the Integration Test strategy in these stages. Once the development is complete on SDLC, STLC will start with unit testing, integration testing and System testing.
