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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
- Companies
- 11
- Topics
- 8
- Languages
Showing 91–120 of 625 results
- BloombergMediumData EngineerImplement RotatingFileSink in hierarchy
This question evaluates a candidate's proficiency in Python object-oriented design, file I/O and JSON serialization, concurrency control via locking, context manager protocols, custom exception handling, and adherence to Liskov substitution when implementing a rotating file sink.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - BnpEasyData ScientistExplain and compute option delta
Evaluates understanding of option delta, the differing intuitions/signs for calls versus puts, and the ability to compute deltas under the Black–Scholes model; commonly asked to assess quantitative reasoning about derivative sensitivities, model-based pricing, and hedging concepts.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - BnpEasyData ScientistFind expected tosses to see a coin pattern
Assesses probabilistic reasoning and stochastic-process modeling skills, focusing on expected stopping times for pattern occurrences in repeated independent trials and related concepts like state-space representation and overlap effects.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - BnpEasyData ScientistHow do you split coins to match heads?
This question evaluates logical reasoning about invariants and combinatorial parity, testing the candidate's ability to design deterministic strategies under partial information; it falls under Software Engineering Fundamentals with relevance to probability and discrete mathematics for a Data Scientist role.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - BnsfMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a rail freight quote API service layer and scale it for slow dependencies
Given a REST API requirements document for a rail freight quote endpoint that depends on other services and a database, write the service-layer logic. Then design an architecture that keeps the endpoint fast and reliable under heavy traffic when its dependencies are slow, covering caching, timeouts, fallbacks and asynchronous quotes.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - BobyardMediumSoftware EngineerBuild Nested Comments from Parent References
This problem tests your ability to handle tree data structures, pointer manipulation, and graph validation while processing unordered flat data.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenTreesGraphsHash Maps - BobyardMediumSoftware EngineerHow do you debug slowness and bugs?
This question evaluates troubleshooting and incident-response competencies, including performance debugging, root-cause analysis, severity assessment, mitigation and impact reduction, stakeholder communication, and safe deployment practices for web applications.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - BoeingEasySoftware EngineerExplain AWS access control and frontend typing
This question tests fundamental knowledge of cloud security primitives in AWS and modern frontend development patterns, specifically focusing on secure data access and robust TypeScript architecture.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenAWSS3IAM - Booking.comMediumSoftware EngineerDesign an AI-Assisted Development Workflow
Design an end-to-end, safe AI-assisted development workflow incorporating bounded task scopes, structured agent skills, deterministic guardrail hooks, and automated review gates.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenAI WorkflowsDeveloper ToolingSystem Design - BrexMediumSoftware EngineerBuild a React color multi-select dropdown UI
This question evaluates front-end React skills including component architecture, state management, data-driven rendering, accessibility considerations, and performance trade-offs involved in implementing a multi-select dropdown that presents selected colors' properties.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - BrexMediumSoftware EngineerSplendor-Style Card Purchases with Gem Costs, Color Discounts and Concurrent Buys
Model a Splendor-style card game in code: check whether a player's five-color gem inventory can afford a card, make an all-or-nothing purchase, and apply discounts earned from cards already owned. A follow-up asks how to keep one player's simultaneous purchase requests safe and consistent.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - BridgeMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a Stepped Iterator
Design and implement a stepped iterator class that wraps an underlying iterator or sequence, advancing by a configurable step size on each call. This tests iterator design, state management, invariant preservation, and edge-case handling.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenDesignIteratorsData Structures - BridgeMediumSoftware EngineerSelect an Object by a Dynamic Integer Field
Implement a clean, defensive utility function to select a dictionary from a collection based on the minimum or maximum value of a dynamic integer field, properly handling missing keys and ties.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screendata-manipulationpythonclean-code - ByteDanceHardBackend EngineerBackend Fundamentals Deep Dive: MySQL Internals, Redis, and the HTTP/HTTPS Request Lifecycle
This problem tests your depth in database durability mechanisms, caching strategies for consistency, and the network-level steps involved in secure HTTP request handling.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenMySQLRedisSystem Design - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerC++ vs Go for Backend Services: Memory, Concurrency and Trade-offs
From a TikTok backend intern interview: compare C++ and Go across memory management, concurrency, error handling, language features and tooling, and explain when each language is the better choice for a service. It tests practical understanding of runtime trade-offs rather than syntax trivia.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerChoose Between REST, WebSocket, and Server-Sent Events for an Agent Runtime
This question tests the ability to evaluate communication protocols based on specific architectural requirements, including bidirectional signaling, state recovery, and infrastructure overhead.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenSystem DesignProtocolsAPI Design - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerDefend a Project's Schema, Indexes, and Concurrency Model
Practice defending a database design by connecting schema choices, indexes, consistency behavior, and concurrency controls to concrete access patterns. The solution explains how to reason about CAP trade-offs, lost-update prevention, transaction boundaries, and the operational cost of each index.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a C++ Shared-Ownership Pointer Library
Explain shared-pointer control blocks, copy and move semantics, lifetime invariants, exception safety, and the limits of reference counting.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - ByteDanceHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Configurable Order Validator with DAG Dependencies
This problem tests your ability to design a flexible, extensible rule-processing engine that handles sequential and interdependent validation logic.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenDesign PatternsDAGTopological Sort - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerElasticsearch Deep Dive: Index Mapping Design and How the Inverted Index Works
From a TikTok backend intern interview: explain how the Elasticsearch index and field mappings in a resume project were designed and why, then explain how an inverted index works. It tests whether a candidate understands the search technology they list, from mapping trade-offs to how queries are answered.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Backend Infrastructure Fundamentals
This question tests your understanding of Kafka's distributed messaging architecture, specifically how message distribution, ordering guarantees, and consumer scalability interact during consumer group operations.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenKafkaDistributed SystemsMessaging - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerExplain CAP, indexing, locks, and logs
This question tests fundamental knowledge of distributed systems theory, database storage structures, concurrency control, and recovery mechanisms.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenDistributed SystemsDatabasesConcurrency - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Composite and Covering Indexes in MySQL
This question tests the understanding of MySQL B-tree index structures, specifically how composite index ordering affects query performance, selectivity, and disk I/O.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenMySQLDatabaseB-Tree - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Kafka and Message-Queue Delivery Semantics
This question tests your understanding of distributed messaging patterns, focusing on the architectural differences between log-based and queue-based systems and the trade-offs involved in ensuring reliable message delivery.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenKafkaDistributed SystemsMessage Queues - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Virtual Memory Beyond Physical RAM
This question tests the conceptual understanding of how an operating system abstracts memory management through virtual address spaces, demand paging, and hardware-assisted translation.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenOperating SystemsMemory ManagementPaging - ByteDanceMediumSoftware EngineerExplain the TCP Three-Way Handshake and Its Guarantees
Tests in-depth understanding of the TCP three-way handshake, state transitions, sequence/acknowledgment arithmetic, and failure modes such as dropped final ACKs.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenNetworkingTCP/IPOperating Systems - ByteDanceHardSoftware EngineerHandle Island Counting When the Grid Does Not Fit in Memory
This problem tests the ability to adapt graph traversal algorithms (like BFS or DFS) to scenarios where the dataset exceeds primary memory, requiring disk-based processing or tiling strategies.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenGraph AlgorithmsSystem DesignExternal Memory - ByteDanceMediumSite Reliability EngineerHow You Build Service Stability and Troubleshoot Production Incidents
Tests an SRE candidate's ability to design proactively stable services and execute structured, mitigation-first production incident management under high-throughput conditions.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenSREIncident ManagementObservability - ByteDanceHardSite Reliability EngineerHow to triage slow service alerts
This question evaluates operational troubleshooting and incident management competencies — system observability, severity assessment, blast-radius and user-impact analysis, dependency and performance diagnostics, mitigation decision-making, and incident communication.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - ByteDanceHardSoftware EngineerImplement a binary min-heap and use it to order courses with prerequisites
A two-part coding question: implement a binary min-heap with push, pop, peek and linear-time construction without library helpers, then use it to order courses with prerequisites, always taking the smallest-numbered available course and detecting circular prerequisites. Tests heap mechanics and dependency ordering.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
Bloomberg
Bnp
Booking.com
Brex