Playwright has become one of the most requested automation skills in 2025, especially for engineers working on modern web apps that ship fast and change often. If you’re preparing for an interview, it’s not enough to know a few commands—interviewers typically look for your ability to build stable tests, debug failures, and structure a maintainable framework.
This article summarizes the most common Playwright interview areas and how to prepare effectively, with real-world focus rather than theory.
1) Fundamentals: What Playwright Is and Why Teams Use It
Most interviews start with basics:
What is Playwright?
How is it different from Selenium or Cypress?
Why do teams choose it for end-to-end testing?
The answer that stands out is practical: Playwright supports multiple browsers (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit), has strong auto-waiting behavior, and provides powerful tooling for debugging (trace viewer, screenshots, video, network control). Employers want to know you understand how those strengths reduce flaky tests and speed up feedback in CI/CD.
2) Selectors and Locators: Reliability Over “Works on My Machine”
Expect questions about locators because flaky selectors are a top reason UI automation fails.
You should be comfortable explaining:
Why stable locators matter (test id, role-based selectors)
When to use
getByRole,getByText,locator, and strict mode behaviors
How you would handle dynamic UI elements and repeated components
A good interview response emphasizes “maintainability”: choose selectors that won’t break when UI structure changes, and keep locator patterns consistent across the suite.
3) Auto-Waiting, Timeouts, and Flakiness
Playwright’s waiting strategy often becomes a discussion point:
What does auto-wait mean?
When do you still need explicit waits?
How do you reduce flakiness in CI?
To answer well, explain that Playwright waits for elements to be actionable (attached, visible, stable, enabled) before acting. But you still need smart design: wait for meaningful app states (like an API response, route change, or UI transition) rather than adding random delays. Interviewers love candidates who say, “I avoid waitForTimeout except for rare debugging.”
4) Browser Contexts, Storage State, and Login Reuse
A strong Playwright candidate understands contexts:
Difference between browser, context, and page
Why contexts are useful for isolating tests
How to reuse login using
storageState
Common scenario questions include: “How would you test two users chatting at the same time?” or “How do you avoid logging in for every test?” Browser contexts let you isolate sessions without launching separate browsers every time, and storage state helps speed up repeated auth flows.
5) Network Interception and Mocking
Modern teams test beyond the UI. Interviewers may ask:
How do you block an API call?
How do you mock a response?
How do you validate requests or headers?
Be ready to discuss page.route() and how you can simulate edge cases (500 errors, slow responses, empty payloads) to validate UI behavior. This shows you can test “what matters” even when environments are unstable.
6) Debugging Tooling: Traces, Screenshots, Video, and Logs
Great testers don’t just write tests—they diagnose failures fast. Expect questions like:
How do you debug failing tests in CI?
What is tracing and how do you use it?
A strong answer: enable trace on retry or failure, capture screenshots/videos on failure, and use Playwright’s reports to pinpoint the exact step and DOM state. Mention that traces allow replaying the test timeline, which is extremely useful for remote debugging.
7) Test Runner Concepts: Fixtures, Hooks, Parallelism
Many roles require understanding the Playwright test runner:
Fixtures and why they improve test readability
Hooks like
beforeEachandafterEach
Running tests in parallel and controlling workers
Tagging and grouping tests for pipelines
The “best practice” perspective wins here: keep tests independent, don’t leak state, and design the suite to scale as the product grows.
8) Practical Interview Tip: Think Like a Product Scenario
If you want to impress, tie your answers to real outcomes:
“I optimize selectors so maintenance cost stays low.”
“I use storageState to reduce run time.”
“I mock APIs to test error handling reliably.”
“I enable trace on failure to debug quickly.”
That language signals you’ve worked with real automation pipelines, not just toy scripts.
Where to Find a Full Q&A Set
If you want a complete list of common questions and answers (especially useful for 2025), you can review this detailed interview guide website for Playwright preparation.
Final Takeaway
Playwright interviews are less about memorizing syntax and more about showing engineering maturity: stable locators, smart waits, strong debugging habits, and scalable suite design. Focus on explaining your decision-making, and you’ll stand out quickly.