Features of a Good Test Automation Framework:

In interviews for a test engineer often times the interviewer wishes to know if you could design an automation system all by yourself if need be. Following are the features to look for while designing an test automation framework. 

1: Scalable: Test engineers should be able to add a number of tests. Number of tests should not affect execution of tests.

2: Minimal intervention for running the tests. Ideally, it should be a zero click system. As soon as the build arrives and passes the smoke test, a test run should be scheduled.

3: Good Reporting: After the tests are run, a report to be sent to all the stakeholders. 

4: Good Logging: Logging should be such that it could exactly pin point the cause of the failures. 

5: Fail-fast: Failures should be detected ASAP. Eg, if a failure occurred at the time of build set up, tests should be aborted and a new run should be created. If the failure occurred at the time of build set up and the test automation framework did not report the failure, the tests would get run and eventually all of them would fail. This would result in time loss.

6: Ability to recover from power failures, system restarts and exceptional conditions.  

7: Multiple tests could be run in parallel. Most of the times the test team would have a suite of machines assigned to them, if the automation framework could not run tests on multiple machines resources would get wasted. 

8: Should be able to reveal the correct status of the project. Test team should be able to track all the failures and passed tests. Comparasion with previous runs should be made avaliable.

Feel free to add more.