Operational And Situational Questions
- What would be your approach to a more junior developer on your team who kept questioning your decisions?
- How would you motivate disengaged employees?
- How would you deal with disagreements related to system requirements between senior managers?
- What advice would you give to a new team member? Whats the best way to onboard a new hire?
- How would you negotiate a bigger budget for your team?
- Do you prefer giving team-wide or individual feedback?
- How do you document your programming work?
Luke Yen Game Engineering Lead
Zwifts Game Engineering Lead Luke Yen sees software engineering interviews just as much a company evaluation as a test of the candidates individual skill. If an employer seems condescending or competitive, it could be your cue to cut your losses.
Yen also recommends swaying difficult questions in your favor by focusing on specific strengths, like individual communication style or attention to detail despite unfamiliarity with a certain program.
Read the skills requirement and make sure you brush up on anything related to the position. Ive seen engineers claim theyre familiar with algorithms, C++ or 3D math and then have difficulty providing the definition of some of the more basic terms. Most importantly, however, control your nerves and keep an open mind going into the interview. Its not the interviewers job to defeat the interviewees by asking incredibly difficult questions or to show that theyre the smartest person in the room. At previous companies, Ive seen interviewers come back from interviews boasting to the rest of the team that they broke the interviewees. If you ever interview at a company that conducts high-stress interviews like this, it speaks volumes to the culture. Thats probably not the place you want to dedicate your time for the next couple of years.
Which Leadership Skills Do You Need To Enhance
In response to this question, candidates must show that they are humble and aware that they may have skills they need to develop, but are working on this in their current role.
For instance, your candidates might not be comfortable with pitching new concepts or solutions to clients software requirements. They may struggle with interacting with cross-functional teams, such as marketing, sales, or support.
If so, they should demonstrate that they are actively taking steps to work on these skills. For instance, are they reading books on cross-functional team communication to solve this? Taking an online course? Or are they using new communication tools more frequently to develop these skills?
Also Check: Interview Questions For It Support Specialist
Pick A Programming Language
With your resume done, the next step of your software engineering interview journey is a simple one and won’t take long – decide on a programming language. Unless you’re interviewing for a specialist position like mobile or front end where there are domain-specific languages, you should be free to use any language you want for the algorithmic coding interviews.
Most of the time, you’d already have one in mind – pick the one you use the most and you’re the most comfortable with. The most common programming languages used for coding interviews are Python, Java, C++, and JavaScript. I wouldn’t recommend learning an entirely new language just for coding interviews as it takes a while to become proficient enough in a language to wield it comfortably in an interview setting, which is already stressful enough on its own. My personal programming language of choice is Python because of how terse it is and the functions/data structures the standard library provides.
Read more on programming languages for coding interviews: Picking a programming language
What Kind Of Graphs And Instrumentation Would You Need To Ensure The High Performance Of The Given Architecture
Senior software engineers need to know how their code will perform, and they need to know which graphs to monitor for the overall health of the system. Good candidates will acknowledge that graphs will need to be created, or performance and/or debugging instrumentation will need to be added to the code. Not-so-good candidates will leave that for later, or neglect it completely. Strong candidates will immediately ask what current system monitoring and instrumentation tools are being used.
More specifically, you can ask which graphs would be useful to see if background jobs are running out of control, and the system is responding slowly. Great senior software engineer candidates will ask for graphs showing how many background job servers are running, and what their health is .
Read Also: What Is A Job Interview Like
How To Ask Good Questions In Your Job Interview
Whenever you are being interviewed for a job, the interviewer always asks this question at the end Do you have any questions?
A lot of people are confused about what to ask and what not to ask. Some people do not ask any questions at all.
Well, this is a good opportunity to learn more about the project, the team, and the company. So, you should ask your interviewer as many questions as you can.
Here are a few suggestions from my end.
What Approaches Do You Use To Handle Deadlines That Might Be Brought Forward Or Changed
Since many projects can be considered time-sensitive, take note of candidates who show they can quickly respond to a deadline change.
At the same time, they should also show how theyd maintain the quality of the code, seek support or advice from team members to meet the deadline, and also assess the teams limits and mitigate the risk of burnout.
Also Check: Amazon Technical Manager Interview Questions
When Is A Nosql Database Suitable
The interviewer may use this question to assess how much you know about database design and the criteria you use to choose a database. NoSQL databases store data in an unstructured format, unlike SQL databases which use rows and columns. You can respond by explaining when NoSQL solutions are preferable to SQL databases.
Example:’NoSQL databases are better suited for handling large amounts of data that might miss a pre-defined structure, such as user inputs. This suitability is because NoSQL databases are flexible and unconstrained by the rigid table structure of SQL databases. System designers may find NoSQL databases easier to scale than SQL databases as systems can easily shard them. Distributing NoSQL data across multiple servers may be convenient because of their scalability. Typically, NoSQL databases are faster to query than SQL databases because of their simpler structure and absence of complex joins.’
Related: 8 Database Design Interview Questions
Google Coding Interview Questions
Google has a notoriously competitive interview process that filters in barely 2% of engineers who apply. Googleâs coding interview essentially evaluates your knowledge of core data structures and algorithms.
Letâs take a look at some sample Google coding interview questions:
For more Google-specific coding interview questions, check out the page.
Also Check: What Are The Top 10 Phone Interview Questions
Given An Expression String X Examine Whether The Pairs And The Orders Of Are Correct In The Expression For Example The Function Should Return True For And False For
Cody Daig, Galvanize
What skillset is this testing for? All that you use to solve this problem is the stack. Once you realize you should be using a stack, I would say its a pretty straightforward question. Getting to think in that style of using a different data structure than you might think to solve it, thats the challenge.
What you do is, when you see an open parentheses, square bracket or curly brace, you add that to the stack. And then when you see a closing side of the pair, then you need to pop from the stack. And if the closing matches the opening, good. If it doesnt, then its incorrect or invalid.
Is this a good interview question? Its actually one of my favorite problems. Thinking about it from the data structures perspective, I think that its a very practical skill although youre not necessarily going to be writing algorithms to see if parentheses are balanced. But applying knowledge to solve the problem, thats the key here. Realizing that there are data structures out there to help solve this problem really easily, that are often used when actually building applications and making sure that youre using the most efficient data structure possible to accomplish whatever youre trying to accomplish.
Have You Ever Been Accountable For Handling Several Tasks For A Project At Once How Did You Approach The Situation
Ask this question to determine whether your senior software engineers can multitask, but keep in mind what the definition of multitasking entailsin essence, it means switching back and forth from one thing to another. It can also mean carrying out tasks in close proximity to each other.
Keeping track of progress made on a projects tasks when switching between them is essential. Your candidates shouldnt rely entirely on their memory for this instead, they should be able to use different tools and strategies to help them stay on track.
Recommended Reading: How To Write An Exit Interview Letter
Amazon Coding Interview Questions
Just like Google, Amazon also has a reputation for an interview process thatâs extremely challenging and hard to crack. The Amazon software developer interview has multiple coding rounds where hiring managers evaluate your core problem-solving and programming capabilities.
Below are some sample Amazon coding interview questions:
Check out some additional Amazon Coding interview questions on the page.
Angular Concepts Covered In This Round
The first round of interviews was majorly based around the following Angular concepts:
- Attribute directives
- Structural directives – NgIf & NgFor
Alex verified my solution based on bug fixes, unit test status, and coding style. He was impressed with my performance in the first round and so I moved on to round two of the interview.
Don’t Miss: How To Respond To Interview Rejection
Get Ready For Your Upcoming Technical Interview
If youâve begun preparing for your next technical interview, register for Interview Kickstartâs technical interview webinar and get ahead by understanding foolproof and advanced strategies from industry experts. These reviews from our alums will tell you exactly how weâve helped thousands of students to scallop their professional careers by helping them crack technical interviews at the biggest companies.
How Would You Write A Program To Move Inside A Square Spiral Start At The Upper Left Corner Of The Square And Walk Its Edges Clockwise Just Before Re
def spiral: mat = np.array arr = if mat.shape == : arr.append return arr else: arr.extend arr.extend)) return arrLess
def print_spiral:print_spiral_help – 1, len – 1)def print_spiral_help:if left & gt right or top & gt bot:return# topif dir == 0:for i in range:print matrix,print_spiral_help# Rightelif dir == 1:for i in range:print matrix,print_spiral_help# Leftelif dir == 2:for i in range:print matrix,print_spiral_help# Bottomelif dir == 3:for i in range:print matrix,print_spiral_helpLess
Recommended Reading: What Do I Need For Disability Interview
How Big Was Your Largest Software Engineering Team How Did You Communicate With The Team To Complete Tasks
For most candidates, their largest software engineering team wouldve likely had a maximum of seven members. Team sizes larger than seven are uncommon, especially in companies who use an Agile/Scrum framework: according to Scrum rules, communication can quickly become a challenge in bigger teams.
The ideal way to communicate with team members is to use active listening skills and ask questions to clarify potential issues. You might also hear your candidates mention that communication channels play a vital role and that being brief when communicating can help in some circumstances.
Senior software engineers must also know how to work with engineering managers to complete tasks and will typically have a one-on-one session each week to achieve this.
Talk About Some Mistakes You Learned From
Every software engineer who is passionate about engineering and has worked on personal and business projects will have made some mistakes. Perhaps they worked on a project that ended up failing. That is not a bad thing, however, as it allows them to learn important lessons from those failures.
During the interview process, try to find out what mistakes the software engineer made and what lessons they learned from those mistakes.
This allows you to get an insight into their work ethic, their willingness to admit mistakes and learn, and how they work on improving their skills while working on projects.
Recommended Reading: What To Ask Nanny Interview
How Would You Implement The Bubble Sort Algorithm
- Nest a couple of loops to compare the numbers in the array.
- The array will be sorted in ascending order by replacing the elements if found in any other order.
int a =
for {
for {
if {
int t = a
a = a
a = t
Learn the top skills in-demand including Angular, Spring Boot, JSPs, and SOA to build highly web scalable apps with the Full Stack Java Developer Masters Program.
Senior Software Engineer Interview Questions With Answers
The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed’s data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.
A senior software engineer may lead a team of junior engineers in developing programs. Senior engineers also design and develop solutions to technical problems and report progress to the company’s stakeholders. Familiarising yourself with senior software engineer interview questions can help you prepare for a technical interview that tests your software development experience. In this article, we list eight questions that you may encounter in a software engineering interview with sample answers and offer tips you may use when preparing for your interview.
You May Like: How To Evaluate An Interview Candidate
Senior Software Engineer Interview Questions: 40 Examples
The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed’s data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.
Senior software engineers oversee various development projects and lead teams in realizing company goals. Because of their senior positions, they often manage the needs and approaches to product development for their organizations. If you’re getting ready to interview for a senior role in software engineering, it’s important to prepare in advance for questions that showcase your technical and leadership capabilities.
In this article, we cover 40 senior software engineer interview questions with several example answers to help you get ready and succeed in your interview.
Whats The Runtime Of The Following Code
Josh Tucholski, Tech Elevator.
Josh Tucholski, Tech Elevator
What skillset is this testing for? Another common term thats used is algorithmic complexity. The question could be: If Im going to give someone a block of code, can you tell me what are the worst-case scenarios that I have to consider? Because thats what BigO and algorithmic complexity really mean.
Thats kind of a cue to the interviewee to think about, What are some of the worst-case or edge-case scenarios that I have to be aware of? And thats important, because those things, while they account for maybe one or two percent of the number of inputs, theyre the kinds of things that often will crash our programs.
Is this a good interview question? As software developers, we all have a tendency, when given a problem, to immediately jump into all of the what ifs and the edge cases that we have to worry about especially after weve been kind of burned a couple times. We do tend to try and problem solve and prevent those worst-case scenarios.
Being able to ask in plain English, What is this code doing and whats the worst-case scenario? is an easier way to communicate than to recall the difference between BigO or linear or logarithmic or n2 or exponential time, because then youre counting on someone having been exposed, again, to that type of formal education that covered that content.
Recommended Reading: How To Do A Video Interview
The Fourth Round Of The Interview
Two days after the third round of interviews, I got a call from Vaibhav. He informed me that the interviewers were impressed with my Angular skills but they were not happy with my JS skills. But the overall performance was good, so I was able to move on to the fourth and the final round of interviews. He also suggested that I work on improving my JS skills.
The final round of interviews was scheduled on the Tuesday of the following week from 12:30pm to 1:30pm.
This was a managerial round and Vaibhav was the interviewer along with another senior developer from my team. This round was more focused on my non-technical skills.
He asked me about the project I was working on with my current company. I was also asked questions about Agile methodology since I had mentioned that in my résumé. I told him about my open-source work and he asked few questions about that.
At the end of the interview, Vaibhav shared that he was happy with my performance and wanted to go ahead with the offer. The next step was to update HR so that they could continue with the salary and the offer formalities.
When Would You Use A Nosql Solution Instead Of Sql
The default database for small projects and startups in the last 5 years was to start with a NoSQL solution such as MongoDB or Couchbase. After some years of use, the industry is much more aware of both the advantages and limitations of NoSQL solutions.
This question lets you know if the senior software engineer candidate is aware of those advantages and drawbacks. It can tell you how much the candidate knows about when to select a particular database design, and which database to select for a particular scenario. It also gives you another chance to see how they present their ideas and take into account the risks and persuasiveness of the solution.
Read Also: What Are Common Questions Asked In A Job Interview
