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Software Engineer 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 137 results
- OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign Restart Strategy for Oracle Solver
This question tests the ability to optimize restart intervals for a randomized algorithm with heavy-tailed runtime distributions, balancing the trade-off between progress and computation waste.
Machine LearningHR ScreenProbabilistic ModelingAlgorithmsOptimization - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerExplain JS threading and useState vs useRef
This question evaluates understanding of JavaScript's execution model and concurrency mechanisms (including worker-based threading) along with React state-management semantics, specifically the behavioral differences between useState and useRef.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR Screen - OpenAIEasySoftware EngineerExplain Why You Want This Company and Infrastructure Role
This question assesses the candidate's ability to connect their personal career trajectory with the specific engineering challenges of scaling large-scale AI infrastructure, testing alignment, motivation, and self-awareness.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR ScreenInfrastructureBehavioralCareer Strategy - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerExplain Your Engineering Ownership
This question evaluates engineering ownership, technical leadership, end-to-end system responsibility, trade-off reasoning, and incident diagnosis by asking about recent hands-on work, technology choices, an owned system, and a production failure and fix.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Your Technical Focus and Responsible Use of AI
Assesses a candidate's technical ownership, practical experience integrating AI systems or tools, and their ability to navigate reliability, safety, and ethical trade-offs.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR ScreenBehavioralAI SafetyTechnical Ownership - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerHow to answer common recruiter screen questions
How to prepare for an OpenAI software-engineering recruiter / HR phone screen. Covers the full set of common screen questions — self-intro, work-setup and sponsorship logistics, employment history and departure narrative, promotion and leadership-vs-coding deep-dives, an ambiguity STAR story, search-timeline and 'why OpenAI', referral context, and compensation — with model answers, a STAR framework, and the mistakes that sink candidates.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerImplement Three Research Coding Tasks
This problem tests fundamental understanding of numerical stability in probability, memory-efficient buffering, and greedy combinatorial optimization.
Coding & AlgorithmsHR ScreenNumerical StabilityDynamic ProgrammingStreaming Algorithms - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerLead Through Technical Difficulty and Project Conflict
This question evaluates your ability to provide engineering leadership through severe technical uncertainty, resolve architectural or project disagreements constructively, and deliver measurable impact under high expectations.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR ScreenLeadershipConflict ResolutionTrade-off Analysis - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerPrevent Duplicate Request Processing
This System Design question evaluates understanding of idempotency, request deduplication, client- and server-side reliability mechanisms, and concurrency control in distributed systems.
System DesignHR Screen - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerRecruiter Screen: Current Work, What You Want Next, Level and Work Authorization
Prepare for a recruiter screen for a software engineering role that asks what you are working on now, what you want next along with your current level and promotion history, and your work authorization. Tests concise, concrete answers that give a recruiter what they need to move a candidate forward.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - OptiverHardSoftware EngineerImplement Expiration-Aware Retrieval Across Storage Levels
Design and implement a multi-level storage system that purges expired items, filters for under-utilized storage tiers, and deterministically retrieves the highest-weight item.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR ScreenData StructuresDesignHeap - OptiverMediumSoftware EngineerOptiver SWE Intern HR Screen: Project Deep Dive — Hardest Parts, What You'd Do Differently, and Questions to Ask
This Behavioral & Leadership interview prompt evaluates clarity of communication, ownership, reflective leadership, and the ability to concisely articulate one’s technical contributions during a short project deep-dive for a software engineering internship.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - Retell AIEasySoftware EngineerDescribe a Time You Explained a Complex Technical Concept to Non-Technical People
A behavioral question for a customer-facing engineering role: describe one specific time you explained a complex technical concept to a non-technical audience and how you approached it. Tests STAR storytelling, audience analysis, accurate analogies and how the candidate checks that the message landed.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - RipplingHardSoftware EngineerDesign several backend components
This problem tests your ability to design a robust backend architecture for an employee management system, focusing on data consistency, audit logging, and extensible API design.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR ScreenSystem DesignDatabase ModelingConcurrency - RipplingHardSoftware EngineerDesign several large-scale systems
This question tests the ability to design a distributed, high-concurrency reservation system that requires strong consistency for inventory management and low-latency read access for search.
System DesignHR ScreenScalabilityConcurrencyConsistency - RipplingHardSoftware EngineerExplain Your Current and Previous Engineering Roles
Introduce current and previous engineering roles with clear team purpose, personal scope, concrete responsibilities, and relevant progression.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - RipplingHardSoftware EngineerExplain Your Reason for Changing Roles and Your Interest in the Team
Explain job-change motivation and role interest with specific goals, evidence-backed fit, professional framing, and honest open questions.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - RipplingHardSoftware EngineerSolve listed algorithm problems
This problem tests your ability to model exchange rates as a graph and use path-finding algorithms to detect profitable arbitrage opportunities.
Coding & AlgorithmsHR ScreenGraphsShortest PathBellman-Ford - RipplingEasySoftware EngineerWalk Through Your Current Role, a Recent Work Challenge, and How You Use AI Tools
A recruiter screen for a senior software engineer role asks you to introduce yourself with a focus on your current team and responsibilities, describe a recent challenge at work and how you resolved it, and explain how you use AI tools day to day. It tests concise storytelling, senior-level ownership, and judgment about verifying AI output.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - SalesforceMediumSoftware EngineerRemove duplicates from a singly linked list
This question evaluates understanding of singly linked list data structures and in-place node manipulation to remove repeated values while preserving relative order, testing competencies in pointer management and duplicate-detection.
Coding & AlgorithmsHR Screen - ShopifyMediumSoftware EngineerExplain background, motivations, and stakeholder handling
This question evaluates communication, leadership, stakeholder management, career narrative construction, and compensation/logistics transparency, with emphasis on concise self-presentation, project impact articulation, cross-functional collaboration, and cultural alignment for a software engineering role.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - SnowflakeMediumSoftware EngineerHandle an AI-Led Screening Interview
Prepare a structured Snowflake behavioral interview answer for handle an ai-led screening interview. The prompt helps candidates frame concrete stories, ownership, trade-offs, and follow-up-ready details.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - SquarepointMediumSoftware EngineerDefend a Redis Choice and Explain Database Index Trade-offs
This question evaluates architectural decision-making around data access patterns, comparing the introduction of an in-memory cache like Redis against optimizing relational database indexing and query plans.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR ScreenDatabase IndexingRedisSystem Design - SquarepointMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Core Python Runtime and Language Concepts
Assesses foundational Python runtime semantics and language mechanics, focusing on mutability, generator behavior, concurrency models under the GIL, and robust resource management.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR Screenpythonconcurrencymemory-management - SquarepointMediumSoftware EngineerFind the Most Frequent Character with a Tie-Breaker
Tests string traversal, frequency counting, and deterministic tie-breaking under large input constraints.
Coding & AlgorithmsHR ScreenStringsHash TableCounting - SquarepointMediumSoftware EngineerReturn Elements Greater Than the Overall Average
This problem tests your ability to perform a two-pass linear scan on an array to compute an aggregate statistic and filter elements, emphasizing space complexity and data integrity.
Coding & AlgorithmsHR ScreenArraysMathTwo-pass - SquarepointMediumSoftware EngineerUse find, ps, top, and kill Safely on Linux
Tests practical Linux troubleshooting skills using standard command-line tools (`top`, `ps`, `find`, `kill`) to diagnose resource contention, safely manage processes, and handle tricky file artifacts.
Software Engineering FundamentalsHR ScreenLinuxSystemsDevOps - StackAdaptMediumSoftware EngineerAnalyze time complexity for dictionary operations
This question evaluates understanding of dictionary/hash table performance characteristics, covering hashing, collision-resolution strategies, load factor and resizing impacts, and the cost of iterating or copying keys into a dynamic-array-backed list within the Coding & Algorithms/data structures domain.
Coding & AlgorithmsHR Screen - StackAdaptEasySoftware EngineerCalculate conditional probabilities for coin tosses
This question evaluates understanding of conditional probability and independence in simple probabilistic experiments. It belongs to the Statistics & Math domain, is commonly asked to assess foundational probabilistic reasoning used in statistical inference and algorithmic decision-making, and targets conceptual understanding with elementary practical computation.
Statistics & MathHR Screen - StripeEasySoftware EngineerBackground, AI use at work, misalignment with a company Stripe works with, why Stripe
A recruiter screen for a Stripe software engineer role asks four behavioral questions: a short background summary, how you have used AI in your work, how you would handle Stripe working with a company you are not aligned with, and why Stripe interests you. It tests concise storytelling, responsible AI use, professional judgment in a values conflict, and genuine motivation.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen
OpenAI
Optiver
Retell AI
Rippling
Salesforce
Shopify
Snowflake
Squarepoint
StackAdapt
Stripe