Software Engineering Fundamentals interview questions

Showing 1–30 of 1208 results

• Build a UVM testbench: driver, monitor, scoreboard and coverage-driven closureEasy

  A hardware design verification question on building a SystemVerilog UVM testbench for an RTL block. It covers agents, drivers, monitors and scoreboards, checking results that may leave out of order, catching missing outputs, and using code and functional coverage to steer constrained-random stimulus toward sign-off.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• C++ Code Reading: Bug in a Linked-List insertAfter and Predicting Polymorphic OutputMedium

  Two C++ code-reading exercises: find the bug in a singly linked list insertAfter function that is missing a pointer update and predict what the program prints, then predict and explain the output of code mixing virtual overriding, name hiding, constructors, default arguments and pass-by-value. It tests precise tracing of pointers and dispatch rules.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Design and Implement a Fixed-Capacity LRU Cache with Constant-Time OperationsMedium

  Design and implement a fixed-capacity least-recently-used cache whose get and put operations run in constant time, while answering follow-up probes during coding. It tests data structure composition, careful iterator handling, eviction edge cases, and extensions such as thread safety and expiry.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• DevOps Experience, Jenkins Pipelines and Plugins, and Reading Very Large Log FilesMedium

  Practical DevOps questions: describe your DevOps experience, explain how Jenkins pipelines, agents and plugins are used to build and test software, and show how to fetch and search a log file too large to open or load into memory. It tests hands-on CI/CD knowledge and efficient handling of large files.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Explain Cache Conflicts and Related Memory-Access ProblemsMedium

  Explain cache-set conflicts with address mapping, then distinguish eviction from false sharing and GPU bank conflicts so padding and layout changes target the right cause.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Explain GPU Register Spills and Their Performance CostMedium

  Explain GPU register spills through live-variable pressure, compiler allocation, spill traffic, occupancy tradeoffs, and measured optimization choices.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Explain Skills and Progressive Disclosure in an AgentMedium

  Explain reusable agent skills, prompt context, progressive disclosure, selection metadata, referenced resources, and the boundaries of permissions and validation.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Fast Retrieval at Scale: Databases, Indexing vs Sharding, Red-Black Trees and TriesMedium

  Conceptual questions on data storage and retrieval: what a database is and how to find data quickly in a very large dataset, how sharding differs from indexing, and how red-black trees and tries work. It tests understanding of access paths, horizontal scaling and core search data structures.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Optimize the Memory Accesses of a GPU Matrix TransposeMedium

  Analyze row-major GPU transpose accesses and use tiled shared staging for coalesced reads and writes, with barrier safety, edge handling, and device-specific bank checks.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• PCIe deep dive: TS1/TS2, LTSSM link training, TLP types and transaction ordering rulesEasy

  A PCI Express protocol deep dive for a verification role. It covers TS1 and TS2 training ordered sets, LTSSM link training from Detect to L0 and through Recovery, TLP headers and the Posted, Non-Posted and Completion categories, and the ordering rules that decide when one transaction may pass another.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Profile a GPU Workload and Choose a Parallelism StrategyMedium

  Profile a GPU workload from its critical path to kernel counters, then choose parallelism based on independence, memory capacity, communication, and measured end-to-end gains.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Use the Roofline Model to Analyze Prefill and DecodingMedium

  Apply roofline analysis to LLM prefill and decoding using arithmetic intensity, sustainable bandwidth, batching, KV-cache traffic, and measured kernel behavior.

  AMDSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Extensible Security-Event Pipeline: Rule Suppression and Plugin-Based EnrichmentMedium

  Tests your ability to design and implement an extensible, plugin-based security event processing engine supporting multi-tenant enrichments and dynamic rule suppression.

  Abnormal AiSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Implement a URL-Prefix Sliding-Window Alert MonitorEasy

  This problem tests the ability to manage time-based sliding windows and prefix-based path aggregation to trigger alerts based on request thresholds.

  AddeparSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Extract W-2 PDF Data and Evaluate It Against Reference JSONMedium

  This problem tests data structure manipulation, fuzzy matching logic, and evaluation metrics for comparing extracted AI document data against ground-truth schemas.

  Additive AiSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Calculate Playback Counts per StreamEasy

  This question tests the ability to perform relational database joins and use aggregate functions (COUNT) with grouping to summarize event-level data.

  AdiaData ScientistSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Design a High-Card Game with a Persistent Tie PotEasy

  Design a high-card game in which tied rounds carry a persistent pot into later rounds, first for two players and then for many. Define card ownership, tie and exhaustion policies, deterministic shuffling, termination rules, extensible classes, and tests for tricky state transitions.

  AffirmSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Simulate a High-Card Deck Game for Two Players, Then N PlayersHard

  Model a shuffled 52-card game in which each round the higher top card wins both cards, then report the player with the most cards won. Starts with two players and generalizes to N players with uneven round-robin dealing, testing object design, rule clarification, and deterministic tests.

  AffirmSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Compute probability two arrivals meet within 15 minutesMedium

  This question evaluates understanding of continuous probability and geometric probability, focusing on independent uniform random variables and reasoning about time-window overlap.

  AgodaSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Build an Incremental Loyalty-Points Ledger with Scheduled, Cancelable TransfersMedium

  Implement an in-memory loyalty-points ledger that grows in three stages: atomic transfers between accounts, transfers scheduled for a future point on a simulated clock, and cancellation of a transfer before it fires. Tests incremental state-machine design, validating before mutating, and keeping point totals correct across every sequence of calls.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Define a File Store with User Quotas and CompressionMedium

  Implement an in-memory cloud file store that supports file creation, copying, prefix/suffix search, per-user storage quotas, and atomic file compression/expansion.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Design a Multi-Level In-Memory Cloud Storage ServiceMedium

  Design a multi-tiered in-memory cloud storage system supporting staged uploads, capacity limits, prefix search ranking, and conflict-aware backup and restore operations.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Design a Stateful Banking System with Scheduled Payments and Account MergesMedium

  Design an in-memory stateful banking system that supports account creation, transfers, spending leaderboards, scheduled payments with deterministic backlog processing, and account merges.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Design a Stateful Working Hours RegisterHard

  Design an in-memory working hours and compensation tracking register that supports badge events, top-k leaderboards, scheduled rate changes, and interval-based historical earnings calculations.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Design a banking ledger for deposits/withdrawalsMedium

  This question tests your ability to design a robust database schema and service logic for a banking system, focusing on data integrity, transaction atomicity, and handling high-concurrency balance updates.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Design an In-Memory Cloud Storage Service with Users, Backups, and RestoreEasy

  Implement an in-memory cloud storage system supporting user storage limits, globally unique files, ranked file queries, account merges, and transactional backup and restore operations.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Design an extensible request RetryerMedium

  This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design extensible and robust retry mechanisms, covering competencies in API/interface design, fault tolerance, backoff and jitter strategies, cancellation/deadline handling, idempotency considerations, and observability.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• How do you conduct a code review exercise?Hard

  This question tests a software engineer's ability to conduct structured, high-signal code reviews under time pressure and limited context. It evaluates judgment in prioritizing correctness issues over style, communicating feedback clearly, and handling ambiguity — core competencies in software engineering fundamentals interviews.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Implement a Multi-Level Recipe Management ServiceMedium

  Design and implement an in-memory recipe management service supporting deterministic querying, defensive data isolation, atomic updates, and secondary index maintenance.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Implement a Time-Aware Banking SystemHard

  Design and implement a stateful, time-aware in-memory banking ledger that handles atomic transfers, deferred/scheduled executions, account mergers, historical balance queries, and activity rankings.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment