Software Engineer Interview Examples

Alignment Interview

This is intended to be a casual conversation either with the hiring manager or a technical recruiter. Its purpose is to set expectations and gain an understanding of what the role entails and who the candidate is:

• Get alignment on the role and expectations.
• Understand the candidate’s career goals and how they align with the company’s needs.
• Ensure the candidate meets the role criteria—experience in the relevant area, work authorization, ability to commute or relocate (if in-office), etc.
• Discuss salary expectations. It’s great to see companies publish salary ranges for roles, but whether or not that’s been done, it’s good to confirm that the candidate’s expectations and the role’s budget align early on rather than later in the process.
• If time allows, discuss the company’s status and culture.
• If there aren't red flags, tell them what the interview loop will be like.

Technical Assessment

A technical assessment should evaluate the candidate’s proficiency in relevant technologies. This can be done in several ways, each with its pros and cons:

• Take-home assignments: These allow the candidate to work in a comfortable environment but may be time-consuming as the candidate has to work through the problem until its solved. It’s important to ensure the assignment realistically takes 1-2 hours. Don’t ask candidates to create an app that took your team a week to prototype. Value asymmetry is the most common cause of candidate drop-off at this stage. [[1]] One way to make it easier on candidates is to ask if they have public projects or take-home assignments they've done for other companies.

• Live coding: This involves solving problems in real-time. You can use online platforms like HackerRank or let the candidate work in their own IDE. While live coding simulates a high-pressure environment, which some candidates may not perform well in, it offers an opportunity to collaborate on the problem. Pay attention to the interview questions and the interviewers’ skills—it’s more important to work towards the right answer together than to expect a memorized solution. [[2]]

It’s difficult to create a well-defined take-home task that accurately represents day-to-day work, can be completed within an hour, and allows a full assessment of the candidate’s coding abilities. Live coding might appear to be a more expensive choice because it takes time from team members, but it isn't compared to the cost of candidate drop off through common take-home pitfalls.

System Design Interview

For senior+ engineers, a system design interview is valuable. The goal is to understand how the candidate approaches designing scalable, robust systems. Depending on the company’s values and needs, the focus could be on:

• Distributed systems
• Performance optimization
• Security or privacy considerations
• Flexibility and robustness

Ask the candidate to walk you through how they’d design or improve an existing system. This provides insight into their thought process, technical depth, and how they handle trade-offs.

Getting Stuff Done Interview

Assessing how a candidate works within a team to accomplish projects is vital, especially for senior roles where collaboration and leadership are expected. You can structure this interview around questions like:

• “Tell me about the most multidisciplinary project you've worked on”
• “How do you approach working with other teams, such as product or design?”

This interview should assess their ability to contribute to projects from start to finish, work across disciplines, and manage ambiguity—skills crucial in fast-moving startups.

Culture Interview

Scaling startups often need to hire people who fit into the company culture while adding to it in meaningful ways. A culture interview is designed to find candidates who resonate with your company’s values. Questions can include:

• “Tell me about a time when you had to navigate conflict on a team.”
• “What kind of culture do you thrive in, and what role do you play in team dynamics?”

These interviews help assess how the candidate might work with the current team and contribute to maintaining or improving the company culture.

Leadership Interview (for Staff-Level Roles)

For staff-level and higher roles, you may want to evaluate leadership capabilities. The focus should be on mentorship, inspiring teams, and making strategic decisions. You might ask questions like:

• “Tell me about a time when you led a team through a difficult project.”
• “How do you mentor and inspire junior engineers?”

This ensures the candidate can lead, not just technically but also in terms of fostering growth and collaboration.