The Problem
An organization has hundreds of APIs and microservices. Design a centralized testing platform that validates APIs continuously across development and deployment pipelines.
Requirements
- • Support REST and GraphQL APIs
- • Support functional API testing
- • Support contract testing
- • Validate authentication and authorization
- • Support multiple environments
- • Execute tests in parallel
- • Integrate with CI/CD
- • Provide centralized reporting
High-Level Architecture
Architecture Components
Test Definition Layer — stores reusable API test scenarios.
API Client Layer — handles REST and GraphQL communication.
Authentication Layer — manages authentication strategies.
Contract Validation Layer — validates API contracts.
Execution Engine — executes tests in parallel.
Environment Configuration — manages environment-specific endpoints and settings.
Result Store — persists execution results.
Reporting Layer — provides trends and failure analysis.
CI/CD Integration — triggers tests during builds and deployments.
Senior QA Perspective
“The platform should validate more than HTTP status codes. I would include schema validation, business rules, contract compatibility, authentication, authorization, negative scenarios and service dependencies. For microservices, contract testing becomes important because API consumers and providers can evolve independently.”
Interviewer Follow-ups
- • How would you test APIs with dependent services?
- • How would you handle authentication tokens?
- • How would you test GraphQL?
- • How would you implement contract testing?
- • How would you manage test data?
- • Which API tests should run in a deployment pipeline?