Jagex Qa Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process had about 3 stages: screening, a culture fit interview, and a technical interview. After an offer was made, there was a bonus round, which was pretty fun. Early on, there were some concerning signs about how the company was run: they outsourced most of their QA, were working on a major new project without any QA staff, and had no plans for test automation, yet they praised Agile. The existing QA team seemed to focus mainly on black box testing, which is useful but only part of the picture. However, the QA team and product people were great, and the conversations were natural and easy. I enjoyed talking with them and wished them well, though I had a bad feeling they might need it. The real issues appeared when I interacted with the senior management at Jagex. The recruiter asked about my salary expectations and then completely ignored them, even after saying it would be easy to make a competitive offer. This led to an offer that was $5k less than my current salary and almost $20k less than other offers I had. I asked if there was any room to negotiate the offer because I was very interested in the project and was even willing to take a pay cut, but wanted to see if we could find a middle ground first. The recruiter then went silent. After trying to follow up multiple times, I was told they had rejected the offer on my behalf, which was never my intention and I had made that clear. I expressed my disappointment. A few days later, still upset about it, I reached out again to say I would accept the significantly lower offer if the position wasn't filled, as I'm a fan of their games. The recruiter contacted me, said he'd talk to the relevant people, and he did. This led to a call with the Executive Producer. I tried to explain the situation and how I regretted the offer being declined for me, and that I was willing to take the 30% pay cut to work on what I thought was an important project. This person seemed to disregard everything I said and just asked, "Why are we even having this conversation?" At that point, I realized this likely wasn't going to be a discussion. I kept trying to explain why the role mattered to me and tried to build some rapport, but shortly after, he said he was "busy" and ended the call 15 minutes early. It's hard to imagine working for this person, and I'm confused how someone like that holds a senior position at a well-known company. Optimistically, I tried to chalk it up to a possible cultural difference and waited for feedback, which never came. The recruiter went silent again. Finally, after repeatedly chasing three different people over several days, I learned the offer was rescinded. I don't know how Jagex operates internally, but from my experience, they seem like a typical toxic game company. They don't value quality or their employees and act like they're doing you a favor by hiring you, even if you're overqualified. I can only guess what the internal dynamics are like. Unfortunately, this was probably the worst application process I've experienced in my career in gaming.

Recruiter was pretty rude over the phone. I think they thought I was too experienced for the role. Even though they already knew what I wanted salary-wise (which was about 10k more than they were offering), they still called. They kind of laughed when I told them I only had X amount of experience. I spent a few hours playing a game to get ready for the interview. I'd already found some bugs in the game, but it didn't seem like they cared. It felt like they were just looking for someone who played Runescape a lot and would work for less than market rate.

Applied through the online portal with my cover letter and CV. It was easy to check my application status. The first part was a 30-minute phone chat with the QA team leader and a staff member, which was more about general stuff than specific QA skills. I passed that. Then, I had an interview day at the office. There were 6 of us called in. The day included a QA reporting test, a tour of the office, some group activities, a quick face-to-face interview, and a task where we had to critique a design document. I got an offer a couple of weeks later.