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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.
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Showing 91–120 of 1208 results
- AmazonMediumSoftware EngineerSimplify an Arithmetic Expression Tree with Constant Folding and Identities
Given the abstract syntax tree of an arithmetic expression as a binary tree, write a traversal that returns an equivalent simplified tree using constant folding and algebraic identities. It tests recursive tree processing, cascading rewrites, correct handling of non-commutative operators and recursion-depth limits.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AmazonMediumSoftware EngineerValidate AI-Generated Code Safely
Implement a static validation engine that inspects an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) representation of AI-generated code to enforce security, safety, and complexity boundaries.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenCode SafetyASTTree Traversal - AmericanEasySoftware EngineerDebug and Extend a Nested-Class Program
This problem tests your ability to identify state synchronization issues in nested class structures and implement a thread-safe extension to existing class logic.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenDebuggingObject-Oriented ProgrammingEncapsulation - AmericanMediumSoftware EngineerStructure a Pizza-Ordering System with Four Discount Policies
Design an extensible object-oriented order pricing system for a pizzeria that models pizzas, applies four distinct discount policies with specific composition rules, and returns an itemized, explainable receipt.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnline AssessmentObject-Oriented DesignDesign PatternsData Structures - AmperityHardSoftware EngineerImplement the Core of Minesweeper
Design an object-oriented Minesweeper game engine featuring state management, board generation, flood-fill cell revealing, and testable boundaries.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenObject-Oriented DesignBFSState Machine - AndurilMediumFrontend EngineerDiagnose a Memory Leak in a JavaScript Web Application
Tests your ability to identify common JavaScript memory leak patterns—such as detached DOM trees, uncleared event subscriptions, and unbounded closures—and verify resolution using browser heap profiling techniques.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteJavaScriptPerformanceMemory Management - AndurilMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Hash Map Collisions and Operation Complexity
Tests in-depth understanding of hash table internals, comparing collision resolution mechanisms, deletion strategies, dynamic resizing, and operation complexities under expected and adversarial conditions.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteData StructuresHash MapsAlgorithms - AnrokMediumSoftware EngineerBatch Key Lookups Into One HTTP Request per 100 ms With Callbacks
A callback-based batching exercise: implement start_fetch(key, callback) so that lookups made within a 100 ms window are sent to a /get?keys= endpoint as one HTTP request, using only http_get_request and set_timeout. It tests timer scheduling, per-key callback bookkeeping and keeping overlapping in-flight batches apart on an event loop.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerBatch Image Resize and Rotate with Pillow: Exact Dimensions, Parallelism, Bad Files
A three-part Python image processing exercise: resize and rotate images with Pillow while predicting the exact printed dimensions, speed up a large batch with multiprocessing and a staged pipeline, then keep the batch running through corrupt, oversized and unsupported files. It tests API precision, parallelism and robustness.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicHardSoftware EngineerBatch-Apply Pillow Image Transforms, Then Parallelize: Processes vs Threads
A Python coding exercise that applies a given sequence of Pillow transforms to a folder of cat images and then asks you to cut the total processing time. It tests clean per-image code, reasoning about CPU-bound work and the GIL, choosing between processes and threads, and sizing a worker pool.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerBuild a Resize-and-Rotate Image Pipeline with Multiprocessing
Design a Pillow resize-and-rotate pipeline with explicit transform semantics, bounded multiprocessing, per-image failures, and safe output publication.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerCompare Threads and Processes for Image Processing
Tests operating system concurrency fundamentals, memory ownership models, IPC serialization overhead, and empirical benchmarking strategies for CPU-bound image processing pipelines.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteconcurrencyoperating-systemsperformance - AnthropicHardSoftware EngineerCompute a Global Mode Across Distributed Partitions
Compute an exact distributed mode with local frequency combining, key-based reducers, global winner selection, communication accounting, and skew-aware recovery.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicHardSoftware EngineerCompute an Exact Distributed Median with Limited Communication
Compute an exact distributed median through global rank selection and count reductions, accounting for integer range, local search work, communication rounds, and even-size semantics.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerConvert Sampled Call Stacks into Timestamped Function Start and End Events
Convert a sampling profiler's timestamped call stacks into function start and end events for a trace viewer, explain why ends are emitted innermost first and starts outermost first, then redesign the converter for an unbounded stream. It tests stack diffing, recursion handling and streaming state.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicHardSoftware EngineerDebug Python LRU Cache-Key Construction
Implement and debug a thread-safe, bounded LRU memoization decorator that generates canonical cache keys across equivalent argument patterns, distinguishes conflicting types, and avoids caching exceptions.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsitepythonconcurrencycaching - AnthropicHardSoftware EngineerDebug Tokenization and Detokenization
Implement and debug a prefix-based tokenizer and detokenizer class, ensuring deterministic longest-match greedy tokenization, strict vocabulary validation, explicit error handling for unencodable characters, and guaranteed round-trip fidelity.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsitestring-algorithmstriesoftware-engineering - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerDesign Distributed Sorting Around an Explicit Helper Contract
Design and implement the coordination logic for a distributed range-based sort across multiple worker nodes, specifying the worker helper contract and handling key skew and duplicate values.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsitedistributed-systemsalgorithmssystem-design - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Parallel Image Processor
This problem tests your ability to design a thread-safe, parallelized image processing framework that handles neighborhood-based pixel operations without race conditions.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenConcurrencyMultithreadingImage Processing - AnthropicHardSoftware EngineerExplain CPU-Bound vs I/O-Bound Work
This question evaluates understanding of CPU-bound versus I/O-bound workloads and their interaction with concurrency models such as multithreading, asynchronous I/O, and multiprocessing in Python, including the impact of the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) and relevance to tasks like web crawling, parsing, and heavy computation.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - AnthropicMediumMachine Learning EngineerExplain multithreading vs multiprocessing
This question tests your conceptual understanding of how process-based and thread-based concurrency models leverage hardware resources and their respective trade-offs in the context of Python and high-performance ML workloads.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteConcurrencyPythonOperating Systems - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerFind Duplicate Files by Content in a Directory Tree and Explain CPU vs I/O Costs
Walk a directory tree and report every group of files with identical contents, printing nothing when there are no duplicates. It tests staged filtering by size and hashes, streaming reads of large files, link and error handling, and reasoning about whether the job is CPU-bound or I/O-bound.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerFix a Buggy LRU Cache, Then Make It Durable with a Write-Ahead Log
Debug a flawed least-recently-used cache by finding each bug with a reproducing call sequence and fixing it, then make the cache durable across crashes with a write-ahead log and snapshots. It tests careful code reading, constant-time LRU design, crash-consistent persistence and recovery.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicHardSoftware EngineerFunction-Call LRU Cache: Argument Key Generation and Crash Recovery from a Log
A Python exercise that builds an LRU cache for memoizing function calls. Part one asks how to generate a reliable cache key from a function and its arguments; part two adds crash recovery through an append-only log file, testing record framing, durability, torn writes and replay of the cache state.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicHardSoftware EngineerHow do you review a design document?
This question assesses a candidate's ability to critically evaluate technical design documentation by identifying architectural risks, scalability bottlenecks, and gaps in operational planning.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteSystem DesignCode ReviewReliability - AnthropicEasySoftware EngineerImplement a Duplicate-File Reporter
Implement an efficient file system scanner that identifies duplicate files while minimizing disk I/O and gracefully handling filesystem errors.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screenfile-systemio-optimizationhashing - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerMake a Web Crawler Concurrent with Thread-Safe Visited State
Convert a sequential crawler to bounded concurrency using atomic URL reservation, explicit retry state, and completion detection that accounts for active fetches.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerMode, Median and Sort Across 10 Nodes with Send/Receive While Minimizing Traffic
Integers are spread across 10 nodes that communicate only by sending and receiving messages. Write the per-node programs that compute the exact mode, the median and a globally sorted order while sending as little data as possible. It tests MapReduce-style aggregation, distributed selection, sample sort and message coordination.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerParallelize a Directory Walker With Thread-Safe Visited Tracking
Turn a sequential directory walker into a bounded-concurrency one, using an atomic reserve-before-expand step so two worker threads that reach the same directory at once never process it twice.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteconcurrencythreadingshared-state - AnthropicMediumSoftware EngineerResolve a Package Dependency Graph with Concurrent Fetches
Discover a package's transitive dependency graph from a slow, flaky registry, first with a sequential BFS and then with a bounded pool of worker threads. Tests atomic visited-set reservation, explicit retry state, and correct termination detection with in-flight work.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteconcurrencythreadinggraph-traversal
Amazon
Anthropic