Software Engineer Interview Experiences & Questions
331 real Software Engineer interviews from 129 companies: what each round covers, the exact questions, and who got the offer.
What to expect · Software Engineer
Based on 331 real interviews
Software Engineer interviews by company
The Software Engineer interview process
Most common round types: Coding (173), Behavioral (147), System Design (108), Technical (104), Data Structures & Algorithms (62), Project Discussion (45).
Real Software Engineer interview questions
- How would you improve LinkedIn Messaging?
- Design a file system where we can add a directory and erase a directory and find the number of directories under one directory.
- Tell me about yourself.
- How would you design a frequency capping system?
- Design a doubly linked list.
- Given an org chart tree, compute each employee's level, identify balanced employees, and build a histogram of employees by level.
- Walk me through the take-home you submitted and explain your design decisions.
- Why do you want to switch jobs now?
- I was given a snippet of code and was asked how to find mistakes and what can i do it to make it production ready
- What data models do you need for an advertiser to start a campaign and show ads to users?
- Here is a large Python file with three bugs. Find where the bugs are coming from and fix them.
- Present a project of your choice.
- Experience, Professional history
- Top K Frequent Elements
- Tell me about a time you identified a mistake in a project.
- Can you walk me through your background and the projects you've worked on?
- How would you use AI to improve the testing coverage and reliability of a service?
- Given three C++ function headers, implement the underlying cache or buffer behavior they describe.
- Solve this timed HackerRank problem and then handle the harder second part.
- Solve this Python palindrome-style coding question.
- How have you managed risk in a project?
- Describe an experience working in a cross-functional team.
- Koko Eating Bananas
- Pair Programming (Fix all the bugs)
- Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
- Design a highly distributed trading system.
- # Problem Statement: Dynamic Product Queue Design a data structure that maintains a list of integers and supports efficient product calculation. The structure follows a **First-In-First-Out (FIFO)** eviction policy.…
- What do you know about algorithms?
- Tell me about a project.
- Tell me about the most challenging situation you faced in your career and how you handled it.
- Given a JSON file of records, write a program that consumes it and returns the filtered results based on the requirement.
- Reverse a linked list.
- Can you walk me through your experience?
- Design a brokerage system.
- Implement a simple text editor supporting insert, delete, and cursor movement.
- If the data set is too large to fit in memory on one machine and you have multiple workers, how would you sort it?
- Tell me about a project that failed.
- Build a Go implementation to manage requests within a certain time span.
- Tell me about your greatest success.
- What compensation are you expecting for this role?
Showing 40 of 1004 questions. Open any experience for every question and how the candidate answered.
Latest Software Engineer interview experiences
“Easy to interview. Recruiter + director were very nice but tech screen engineer was quite cold. Unique experience with the Ai coding round being the first one.”
“Both rounds went well. I highly recommend reviewing previously asked questions for the company you are interviewing with. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could solve both problems easily,…”
“The process was more rigorous than anything I’d done at other big tech companies, but the recruiter was actually accurate and helpful on what to prepare, which is rare and I really appreciated that.…”
“I was referred by a friend in that Company. First had the call with the HR, which discussed the salary expectations, and experience, and tech stack, then first interview was scheduled, in that…”
“Overall the interview process was smooth. A recruiter call to align on the work culture and talk about what the company does, and why you're interested in working there”
“The process on start is very easy ( online assessment , phone screen) but coding is very difficult - LEETCODE MEDIUM”
“Hackerrank was supposed to run but the code that was already there was failing. I was able to code the whole logic and tell the time complexity and space complexity , but the code was not able to…”
“Overall, the interview process went well. The questions were clear and gave me an opportunity to explain my skills, experience, and interest in the position. I felt comfortable communicating with…”
“The screening process was pretty straightforward. It started with a few basic questions about my prior experience, relevant background, and the technical projects I had worked on. From there, the…”
“It was well, interviewer was helpful and was asking mostly standard questions from leetcode. I prepared from Strivers A2Z sheet so it was enough. I could have explained my thinking better”
“OA was relatively easy, phone screen was similar, lots of behavioral questions. Overall it was a good process, not very difficult but they do value technical coding skill.”
“OA was extremely rigourous and took about 3-4hrs at a stretch. 2 coding ques 1) DP Hard 2) Springboot framelwork 6 errors. had to solve using AI assisted bot through a repository”
“The process was smooth. The interview scheduling and the interviewers were quite friendly. The usage of AI was allowed and that made the coding round go smoother. I could have done a little better…”
“I went well in all rounds, coding went smoothly, i easily did all the questions. System design also went well, have a nice chat with the interviewer.”
“The process was smooth, the interviewer was not that responsive through out but I got invited to onsite in an hour”
“Overall, the interview process was well structured and the communication from the recruiting team was helpful. I appreciated receiving preparation materials in advance and having clarity on what to…”
“The process was really simple. recruiter screen, technical interview, behavioral interview. I didn't do good in behavioral interview as I rushed to the answer without understanding question properly…”
“Very smooth and easy. There were multiple different parts. Practice heaps and should be easy. Each phase built on each other but was not super complex. Overall very passable.”
“The system design interview was a bit different than the typical ones, it asked me to review an existing design doc and give feedback. Initially I was a bit uncertain, but was able to navigate the…”
“still in progress but just leetcode prep. Studied some dsa and system design. Also dynamic programming helps.”
“The difficulty level was medium, interviewer was very interested in understanding the different approaches rather then looking on a particular solution”
“Got OA , there are 3 dsa questions , need to solve in three languages only ( java, python,go) . After clearing is got bar Raiser round”
“The interview was a standard FAANG type of interview, where the recruiter screen talked about resume and behavioral questions, and the first coding round was a non-AI traditional leetcode question.”
“It was totally based on scalability plus telling tradeoffs. Design with discussion was expected.”
“You need to be really fast at coding as question has multiple parts and follow ups. so practicing coding in your own language is really important”
“The technical round was less about difficult algorithms and more about if you knew how to code and understand basic data structures. Focus on the fundamentals rather than difficult leetcode problems.”
“The recruiter was helpful but the interview was challenging. Most of my time went in drawing the design on their online IDE. I think they are looking how you can give a structured answer of the system”
“If you are able to code under pressure. can comfortably complete leetcode mediums. You will do well.”
“The process was straight-forward, I also felt sick the day before the phone interview and they rescheduled it without any problem. The phone interview was quite "flat", I talked almost the whole…”
“It went pretty well, but I missed the coding one since I didn't realize there was a second part and they didn't give me much time.”
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are in the Software Engineer interview?
Candidates report a typical 3 rounds, usually including a recruiter screen, online assessment, phone screen, take-home assignment.
How hard is the Software Engineer interview?
Candidates rate it 3.2/5 on average (medium), across 331 interviews.
How long does the Software Engineer hiring process take?
About 3 weeks from first contact to decision, based on reported timelines.
What percentage of Software Engineer candidates get an offer?
44% of candidates with a final result got an offer (110 of 251).
What does the Software Engineer interview focus on?
The most common round types are Coding, Behavioral, System Design, Technical.