Software engineer interview questions
Software interviews mix problem solving, your projects and how you work in a team. Expect to explain your code, not only write it.
About you
1Tell us about yourself.
What they want to know: Whether you can sum up who you are and why you fit, in a minute.
How to answer: Present, past, future: what you do now, one or two things you did that matter for this job, and why you want it.
2Why do you want this job?
What they want to know: Whether you know what the job is and chose it on purpose.
How to answer: Name two things about the role or the organisation that match what you are good at. Avoid salary and security as your main reason.
3What are your strengths and weaknesses?
What they want to know: Self-awareness, and honesty.
How to answer: Give a strength with a short example. For a weakness, pick a real one that does not break the job, and say what you do about it.
Engineering
4Walk us through a project you built.
What they want to know: Whether you understand your own work end to end.
How to answer: The problem, your stack and why, the hardest part, and what you would do differently.
5How would you find and fix a slow page or query?
What they want to know: Practical debugging.
How to answer: Measure first, find the bottleneck, fix one thing, measure again. Mention indexes or caching where they fit.
6How do you use Git in a team?
What they want to know: Day-to-day collaboration.
How to answer: Branches, pull requests, reviews and small commits with clear messages.
7Tell us about a bug you were proud to fix.
What they want to know: Persistence and method.
How to answer: How you reproduced it, found the cause, and made sure it did not come back.
Reading is not practising.
Answer five questions for this job and get feedback on each, with a stronger answer built from your own experience. Or book a mock interview with an expert.
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