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Software Engineering Fundamentals Interview Questions
Practice 9403 coding, system design and machine learning questions from 546 companies, sorted by role, topic and interview round. Every question has step-by-step hints, a code runner that supports 8 languages and an AI mentor; members also get the full solution walkthrough.
- 9403
- Questions
- 546
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- 11
- Topics
- 8
- Languages
Showing 1081–1110 of 1208 results
- StripeMediumSoftware EngineerRestaurant Listing CSV Linter: Required, Length, Banned Terms, Overlap
Write a configurable linter for restaurant-listing CSV rows that reports missing fields, length violations, whole-word banned terms, and too-low or too-high word overlap between fields after normalization. Tests robust CSV parsing, text normalization, rule-driven design and edge-case thinking.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screencsvstring-processingvalidation - StripeMediumSoftware EngineerReview a Production Pull Request and Calibrate Feedback to the Author's Seniority
A staff-level Stripe code review exercise: review a realistic production pull request, decide what blocks the merge, and write the actual comments. It tests review prioritization, scrutiny of tests and failure modes, comment severity labeling, and how you adapt the delivery of feedback for early-career versus senior authors.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOther - StripeMediumSoftware EngineerSchedule Welcome and Expiration Emails from Subscription Records
A programming exercise that turns customers' subscription records into a chronological schedule of lifecycle emails, such as a welcome email at the start and an expiration email at the end. It tests date arithmetic, deterministic ordering of same-day emails, and a rule design that makes new email types easy to add.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - StripeEasySoftware EngineerSpecify Proximity-Based Request Routing
Clarify proximity metrics, destination eligibility, tie rules, and capacity before designing a request-routing algorithm.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment - StripeMediumSoftware EngineerValidate CSV Company Records for Missing Fields, Length, Forbidden Words and Overlap
Build a validator for a CSV of company records that flags missing fields, values outside length limits and forbidden words, then measures word overlap between fields while ignoring case, spacing and words such as LLC. It tests robust CSV parsing, text normalization, rule-driven design and edge-case testing.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - StubHubMediumSoftware EngineerDesign an Event Recommendation Engine
This question evaluates object-oriented design, system extensibility, interface and responsibility definition, and integration with external services in the context of a recommendation engine.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - SupioEasySoftware EngineerDebug and extend a streaming chat app
This question evaluates debugging and implementation skills across frontend-backend interaction, including authentication/configuration, client-side state management, streamed response handling, request cancellation, and reasoning about API payload contracts.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - TargetMediumBackend EngineerImplement a Synchronized First-Available Seat Allocator
This problem tests your ability to design a thread-safe allocator that manages a finite resource pool under high concurrency, focusing on atomic updates and race condition prevention.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnline AssessmentConcurrencyAtomic OperationsThread Safety - TeslaMediumData EngineerBuild a Transaction CSV Cleaning Pipeline
This problem tests your ability to design a robust, deterministic data cleaning pipeline that handles input parsing, data validation, and precision-safe numeric handling.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenETLData EngineeringValidation - TeslaMediumSoftware EngineerCoordinate Counter Updates Across Threads
Tests multi-threaded synchronization, atomic operations, barrier synchronization, and coordinated condition handling across concurrent threads.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteconcurrencymultithreadingsynchronization - TeslaEasySoftware EngineerDesign a JSON Merge API with Pluggable Behaviors
Implement a non-mutating JSON merge utility with recursive object handling, configurable array merge strategies, and an extensible design for custom merge policies.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screenjsonrecursionapi-design - TeslaMediumSoftware EngineerDiscuss Distributed-System Experience with Go, Java, Spark, and Elasticsearch
Tests your ability to clearly explain distributed systems architecture, justify technology selections (such as Go, Java, Spark, and Elasticsearch), and discuss operational bottlenecks and fault tolerance from real production experience.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR ScreenDistributed SystemsGoJava - TeslaMediumBackend EngineerExplain reliability and runtime fundamentals
This question evaluates understanding of reliability and runtime fundamentals in backend engineering, covering competencies such as fault tolerance, end-to-end request lifecycles, API gateway degradation, storage engine selection for search, and the distinction between compilers and interpreters.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - TeslaEasySoftware EngineerHandle API Errors with Python Requests
Tests your ability to write resilient HTTP client logic in Python using requests, distinguishing between retryable and non-retryable errors, handling rate limits, and safely parsing JSON.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screenpythonnetworkingapi - TeslaHardSoftware EngineerImplement Reduce and Derive Map and Filter from It
Explain reduce semantics, derive ordered map and filter with a reducer, and compose them over table rows while handling empty input and accumulator costs.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - TeslaMediumSoftware EngineerInvestigate Recurring Bugs and Prevent the Same Failure from Returning
Implement an invariant analysis engine to identify recurring bugs across production incident traces, pin down the earliest violating step, and flag failures recurring above a frequency threshold.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR ScreenDebuggingTestingData Processing - TeslaMediumSoftware EngineerReason About Alternating Positive and Negative Values
This problem tests your ability to manipulate array elements in-place while managing constraints on stability and the treatment of special values like zeros.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteArraysTwo-PointersIn-place - TeslaMediumSoftware EngineerReason About Character Paths in a Grid
Tests depth-first search with backtracking on a 2D grid, covering cycle prevention, branching path exploration, termination criteria, and lexicographical ordering.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsitedfsbacktrackingmatrix - TeslaHardSoftware EngineerTroubleshoot Processes That Randomly Crash While Being Created on Linux Cluster Hosts
Processes scheduled onto a Linux server cluster randomly crash while being created, and the interviewer plays the system while you hunt for a planted cause. It tests Linux troubleshooting commands for processes, memory, network and disk I/O, and reasoning about how cron jobs spawning tens of thousands of threads can break other workloads.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - TeslaMediumSoftware EngineerUse Metrics and Logs to Establish a Production Root Cause
This question tests your systematic approach to troubleshooting production incidents in distributed architectures using metrics, distributed tracing, structured logs, and change audit trails.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR ScreenObservabilityDistributed SystemsSite Reliability - TestGorillaMediumSoftware EngineerAssess Spring IoC, AOP, JDBC, Security
Assess Spring IoC, AOP, JDBC, Security evaluates engineering fundamentals, trade-offs, examples, pitfalls, and operational implications in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment - The Trade DeskEasySoftware EngineerAdd a click listener to a button
Add a click listener to a button evaluates requirements, assumptions, structured reasoning, trade-offs, and verification in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - The Trade DeskMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Recipe Manager
Evaluates API and in-memory data structure design, search and sorting semantics, user-associated operations, versioning/audit history, data normalization, and edge-case handling within the Software Engineering Fundamentals domain.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment - TikTokMediumSoftware EngineerAnswer core Python, CS, DB, and testing questions
This problem tests foundational software engineering knowledge across Python internals, database indexing, and testing strategy through a multi-part conceptual assessment.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenPythonDatabasesSystems Design - TikTokEasySoftware EngineerDesign automated regression tests for an API
This question assesses the ability to structure a comprehensive automated regression suite for a RESTful API, focusing on test case selection, validation strategies, and maintenance.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenAPIQACI/CD - TikTokMediumSoftware EngineerExplain C++ containers, segfaults, and virtual dispatch
This question assesses the candidate's deep understanding of C++ memory management, the runtime implementation of polymorphism, and the performance characteristics of standard containers.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenC++Memory ManagementPolymorphism - TikTokMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Java ConcurrentHashMap and queues
This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of Java concurrency primitives and concurrent collection implementations, focusing on thread-safety, synchronization mechanisms, lock-free techniques, and blocking versus non-blocking queue behavior.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - TikTokEasySoftware EngineerExplain TLS Handshakes and HTTPS Traffic Inspection
Tests understanding of the TLS handshake, asymmetric vs. symmetric cryptography in HTTPS, certificate authority verification, and the mechanics of forward secrecy versus intercepting HTTPS proxies.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenNetworkingSecurityTLS/SSL - TikTokMediumMachine Learning EngineerExplain Transformer, GPT vs BERT, and PR metrics
This question evaluates understanding of modern NLP model architecture and evaluation metrics, specifically Transformer block components, key distinctions between GPT and BERT including pretraining objectives and usage, and precision/recall interpretation, testing competencies in deep learning architecture knowledge, model selection reasoning, and metric-based evaluation within the Software Engineering Fundamentals domain for a Machine Learning Engineer role. It is commonly asked because it probes both conceptual understanding of architectures and pretraining paradigms and practical application of performance trade-offs—assessing conceptual understanding alongside practical application in threshold-based precision versus recall decisions.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - TikTokMediumSoftware EngineerImplement and compare key design patterns
Implement and compare key design patterns evaluates requirements, scale assumptions, API/data design, architecture, trade-offs, failure modes, and rollout in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
Stripe
StubHub
Tesla
The Trade Desk
TikTok