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Software Engineering Fundamentals interview questions

1208 Software Engineering Fundamentals questions from 253 companies, with hints, runnable code and solution walkthroughs.

Questions1208

123 easy887 medium198 hard

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Software Engineering Fundamentals interview questions by the numbers

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Katkat has 1,208 Software Engineering Fundamentals interview questions from 253 companies; the most come from OpenAI (5%), Stripe (4%) and Amazon (3%). By difficulty: 10% easy, 73% medium and 16% hard. The most common round is Technical Screen (52%). Frequent concepts include Data Structures, Concurrency, System Design and Algorithms.

Companies (253)

Difficulty

  • Easy10% · 123
  • Medium73% · 887
  • Hard16% · 198

Interview rounds

  • Technical Screen52% · 625
  • Onsite37% · 448
  • Online Assessment8% · 96
  • HR Screen2% · 28
  • Other1% · 11

Roles

  • Software Engineer85% · 1026
  • Frontend Engineer4% · 51
  • Machine Learning Engineer2% · 30
  • Backend Engineer2% · 25
  • Data Scientist1% · 17

Frequent concepts

  • Data Structures8% · 97
  • Concurrency8% · 96
  • System Design8% · 93
  • Algorithms3% · 42
  • API Design3% · 42
  • Object-Oriented Design3% · 35

Most mentioned in interview experiences

  1. 1.Plant Infection Grid Simulation: Days to Stabilize, Immune Plants, Expiring Immunity5 reports
  2. 2.Bootstrap Service: Aggregate Downstream Services and Return the Right HTTP Status4 reports
  3. 3.Crawl an HTTP-served maze to its exit with 503 retries, dead ends and cycles4 reports
  4. 4.Find the Exit of an HTTP URL Maze Despite Flaky 503s and Bad JSON4 reports
  5. 5.In-Memory Workspace Credit System With Transfers, Top-K and Scheduled Transfers4 reports
  6. 6.Virtual Card Case Study: Trade-offs, Card Number Rule Checks, and Debugging a Filter4 reports
  7. 7.Virtual Card Numbers Case: Trade-offs, Payment Validation Rules, Debugging4 reports
  8. 8.Workspace Credit Ledger: Transfers, Top-K, Scheduled Transfers, Merges, Balance History4 reports
  9. 9.Build a UVM testbench: driver, monitor, scoreboard and coverage-driven closure3 reports
  10. 10.Debug a Layered Book Search Service Against Five Search Rules3 reports

Counted from 425 candidate interview experiences on Katkat. How we collect and count

Showing 1201–1208 of 1208 results

  • Dynamic Batching Decode Loop for a Mock Language Model with Slot RefillingMedium

    An LLM inference coding question: write the generation loop for a mock language model that returns one next token per sequence in a batch. Requests finish at different steps on a stop token or a max-token limit, and freed batch slots must be refilled from a waiting queue, testing state tracking and batching logic.

    xAIMachine Learning EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
  • Explain process vs thread and memory-sharing risksMedium

    This question tests the conceptual understanding of process versus thread architecture and the synchronization challenges inherent in shared-memory multithreading.

    xAISoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
  • Find All Faulty GPU Nodes with Parallel Group Tests That Cannot Share NodesMedium

    An algorithm design question about finding every faulty GPU node when the only tool is a group test that fails if any node in the set is bad. Tests need at least two nodes and parallel tests cannot share nodes, so it tests adaptive testing strategies, identifiability, and cost in rounds and tests.

    xAIMachine Learning EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
  • Implement an Asynchronous React TypeaheadMedium

    Implement a debounced React typeahead with stale-response protection, cancellation, loading/error states, keyboard selection, and accessible combobox semantics.

    xAIFrontend EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
  • Load and Display a React List with useEffectMedium

    Load a React list with useEffect while handling endpoint changes, cleanup, stale responses, HTTP and schema errors, stable keys, and user-visible states.

    xAIFrontend EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
  • Make a Racy BankAccount Deposit Thread-Safe Without Editing the Class, in Python and GoMedium

    A concurrency question built around a BankAccount class whose deposit method reads the balance, sleeps, then writes it back. Candidates find every race, make deposits thread-safe through a subclass or wrapper without editing or copying the class, and carry the fix over to Go, which has no inheritance.

    xAISoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
  • Render Nested JSON in a Code-Style ViewerMedium

    Render nested JSON safely in React with indentation, type styling, collapsible containers, empty values, and explicit boundaries between a viewer and an editor.

    xAIFrontend EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
  • What are processes vs threads?Medium

    This question evaluates understanding of concurrency concepts—processes versus threads—including memory/address-space management, shared-memory versus inter-process communication, performance trade-offs for CPU-bound versus I/O-bound workloads, and failure/isolation implications such as crash containment.

    xAIMachine Learning EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment

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