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Relias Software Engineer Interview Guide

Relias Software Engineer interview guide: reported rounds, questions and how candidates describe the process.

The 60-second brief

As a Software Engineer at Relias, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the technology that drives our innovative solutions in the healthcare sector. Your work will directly influence the development of software products that improve training and compliance for healthcare professionals, ultimately enhancing patient care. This position is not just about writing code; it’s about leveraging technology to solve complex problems and make a tangible difference in the lives of users. The impact of your role extends beyond technical execution. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers and UX designers, to create user-friendly applications that meet the evolving needs of our clients.

This guide is scoped to a Software Engineer candidate at Relias.

Focus areas

  • Web application development
  • JavaScript fundamentals
  • REST API integration

The Relias interview process

Relias candidates report 3 rounds over 3-5 weeks. The stages below are what candidates describe, not a published process.

Initial Screening

Candidates begin with an initial screening to assess basic qualifications.

What to demonstrate

  • Candidates begin with an initial screening to assess basic qualifications
  • Depth in Web application development

How to prepare

  • Be able to walk your CV end to end in two minutes, and say why this company specifically.
  • Have your salary expectations, notice period and location constraints ready, and ask for the rest of the loop in writing.

Technical Assessment

This may involve coding challenges or problem-solving scenarios to evaluate technical skills.

What to demonstrate

  • This may involve coding challenges or problem-solving scenarios to evaluate technical skills
  • Depth in Web application development

How to prepare

  • Answer aloud and timed: Describe a challenging technical problem you solved in a previous project.
  • Answer aloud and timed: Tell me about a time when you had to work under pressure.

Multiple Interview Rounds

Candidates participate in several rounds, including behavioral assessments and discussions with team leads or managers.

What to demonstrate

  • Candidates participate in several rounds
  • Including behavioral assessments and discussions with team leads or managers

How to prepare

  • Answer aloud and timed: How do you handle conflicts within a team?
  • Answer aloud and timed: Describe a situation where you had to take the lead on a project.

Where candidates lose points

Stay Updated

Keep abreast of the latest trends in technology and healthcare. This will not only help in technical discussions but also demonstrate your passion for the field.

Practice Coding

Regularly solve coding challenges on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to sharpen your skills and improve your problem-solving speed.

Prepare for Behavioral Questions

Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your responses to behavioral questions, ensuring clarity in your examples.

Questions & practice

How do you manage memory in a programming language of your choice?

Medium · Technical / Domain Questions

Approach

  1. Say what the runtime actually does before reasoning about the code.
  2. Name what is shared across threads and what owns each piece of state.
  3. Identify the window where an invariant is briefly untrue.
  4. Distinguish a value from a reference to it, and say which one you handed out.

Follow-up

  • What happens if two callers reach this at the same time?
  • Where could this allocate more than you expect?

Write a function that reverses a linked list.

Medium · Coding / Algorithms

Approach

  1. Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
  2. Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
  3. Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
  4. State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.

Follow-up

  • How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
  • What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?

Solve a problem involving binary trees and explain your approach.

Medium · Coding / Algorithms

Approach

  1. Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
  2. Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
  3. Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
  4. State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.

Follow-up

  • How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
  • What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?

Given a sample dataset, how would you optimize a query to improve performance?

Medium · Problem-Solving / Case Studies

Approach

  1. Name the grain you start from and join outward from it.
  2. Check whether any join is one-to-many before aggregating, or the sums inflate.
  3. Say which index the query would use, and what makes it unusable.
  4. Handle the rows that do not match: that is usually the actual question.

Follow-up

  • How does the query change if that join becomes one-to-many?
  • What happens to this when the table is ten times larger?

Find version gaps and relay lag with window functions

Medium · window functions · event tables · frame semantics

outbox_event holds event_id, aggregate_type, aggregate_id, aggregate_version, event_type, payload, status ('pending','published','dead'), attempts, created_at, published_at. A projection is missing rows and you must decide whether the relay skipped events or the consumer dropped them. Write three queries over the last seven days: one listing every aggregate_id whose published aggregate_version sequence has a hole, one giving per-day counts with a running total, and one returning the newest published event per aggregate. For each, say where the window function is evaluated relative to WHERE and LIMIT. PostgreSQL 16.

Approach

  1. Gaps: compute lead(aggregate_version) OVER (PARTITION BY aggregate_id ORDER BY aggregate_version) in a subquery, then filter next_version <> aggregate_version + 1 in the outer query. Window functions are evaluated after WHERE, GROUP BY and HAVING and before the outer ORDER BY and LIMIT, so the predicate cannot sit in the same WHERE clause and PostgreSQL 16 has no QUALIFY.
  2. Say what the seven-day filter does to the answer: it truncates every partition, so the first row per aggregate has no predecessor inside the window and a hole spanning the boundary is invisible. Widen the window, or join to resource.version as the authority for the true maximum.
  3. Running total: SELECT date_trunc('day', created_at) AS d, count() AS n, sum(count()) OVER (ORDER BY date_trunc('day', created_at) ROWS UNBOUNDED PRECEDING). An aggregate inside a window call is legal because grouping runs before windowing. The grouping key is unique per row here so ROWS and RANGE agree, but write the frame anyway — over ungrouped rows with tied timestamps the default RANGE frame pulls in every peer row and the total jumps.
  4. Newest per aggregate: DISTINCT ON (aggregate_id) ... ORDER BY aggregate_id, aggregate_version DESC is the cheap PostgreSQL-only form when an index matches that order; row_number() OVER (PARTITION BY aggregate_id ORDER BY aggregate_version DESC) = 1 is the portable form and needs a subquery for the same evaluation-order reason as the gap query.

Follow-up

  • Relay failover redelivers events. Does a duplicate break the gap query, and how would you detect one from this table alone?
  • Turn the gap check into a continuous monitor rather than a query someone runs after an incident. What does it watch?

Explain the difference between object-oriented programming and functional programming.

Medium · Technical / Domain Questions

Approach

  1. Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
  2. State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
  3. Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
  4. Work from the requirement backwards to the design.

Follow-up

  • What assumption would you test first?
  • How would you know your answer was wrong?

Describe a challenging technical problem you solved in a previous project.

Medium · Technical / Domain Questions

Approach

  1. Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
  2. State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
  3. Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
  4. Work from the requirement backwards to the design.

Follow-up

  • What assumption would you test first?
  • How would you know your answer was wrong?

How would you approach debugging a production issue that is affecting users?

Medium · Problem-Solving / Case Studies

Approach

  1. Establish what changed and when, before forming any theory.
  2. Pick a bisection that eliminates candidates whichever way it turns out.
  3. Check the instrumentation before believing the symptom.
  4. Separate the trigger from the cause; the deploy is rarely the bug.

Follow-up

  • What would you look at first, and what would it rule out?
  • How would you tell a cause from a coincidence here?

Suggested practice checklist

Built from the rounds and topics Relias candidates report.

Day 1 — Map the Relias loop

  • Write out the reported sequence: Initial Screening, Technical Assessment, Multiple Interview Rounds.
  • For each round, write one sentence on what it is judging, from the description above, and mark the one you are least ready for.

Deliverable: A one-page map of the 3 reported rounds, with the weakest marked.

Day 2 — Work Web application development

  • Spend the session on Web application development, which Relias candidates report being tested on.
  • Write one worked example in Web application development and time yourself on it.

Deliverable: One timed worked example in Web application development.

Day 3 — Work JavaScript fundamentals

  • Spend the session on JavaScript fundamentals, which Relias candidates report being tested on.
  • Write one worked example in JavaScript fundamentals and time yourself on it.

Deliverable: One timed worked example in JavaScript fundamentals.

Day 4 — Work REST API integration

  • Spend the session on REST API integration, which Relias candidates report being tested on.
  • Write one worked example in REST API integration and time yourself on it.

Deliverable: One timed worked example in REST API integration.

Day 5 — Answer out loud: Technical / Domain Questions

  • Answer aloud, timed: Explain the difference between object-oriented programming and functional programming.
  • Answer aloud, timed: How do you manage memory in a programming language of your choice?

Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Technical / Domain Questions question(s), under time.

Day 6 — Answer out loud: Behavioral / Leadership

  • Answer aloud, timed: Tell me about a time when you had to work under pressure.
  • Answer aloud, timed: How do you handle conflicts within a team?

Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Behavioral / Leadership question(s), under time.

Day 7 — Answer out loud: Problem-Solving / Case Studies

  • Answer aloud, timed: Given a sample dataset, how would you optimize a query to improve performance?
  • Answer aloud, timed: How would you approach debugging a production issue that is affecting users?

Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Problem-Solving / Case Studies question(s), under time.

Behavioural preparation

Behavioural rounds judge the decision you made and what it cost.

Tell me about a time when you had to work under pressure.

Medium · Behavioral / Leadership

Approach

  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.

Follow-up

  • What would you do differently if you ran that again?
  • How did you know your change caused the improvement?

How do you handle conflicts within a team?

Medium · Behavioral / Leadership

Approach

  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.

Follow-up

  • What would you do differently if you ran that again?
  • How did you know your change caused the improvement?

Describe a situation where you had to take the lead on a project.

Medium · Behavioral / Leadership

Approach

  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.

Follow-up

  • What would you do differently if you ran that again?
  • How did you know your change caused the improvement?