READ. UNDERSTAND. PRACTICE.
Interview experiences
Explore algorithm tutorials, coding and system design questions, interview experiences, and computer science study guides.
3,669 resources · Page 103 of 153
Interview experiences · Perficient
Perficient Software Engineer interview: agentic AI and continuous feedback
I applied through the careers site and heard from a recruiter within about a week. The first phone screen covered my background and why I was interested in the role, and the process felt organized from the beginning. I then had a technical round with a senior developer that discussed technical agentic AI patterns and included some hands-on evaluation. What stood out was how smoothly the process r…
Interview experiences · Perplexity
Perplexity Software Engineer Interview Experience — A 4-Part 'Todo List for AI' Coding Round
I applied through LinkedIn. The first round was with a recruiter who just asked some basic info, then scheduled a coding round. It had to be done in Python. The coding round question was the "implement todo list for AI" one that's already been posted on the forum. There were 4 parts total. I only got through the first two parts before running out of time. The second part was a pain because every…
Interview experiences · Persistent Systems
Persistent Systems Software Engineer transparent interview experience
The process felt smooth from beginning to end. Recruiter communication was timely, and each step was transparent about what would happen next. The interviewers were professional and made the conversations comfortable. I discussed my background and the expertise they wanted, as well as past work and career goals. The tone stayed relaxed even when questions became more specific. I did not get an of…
Interview experiences · Petco
Petco Account Executive interview experience
After a recruiter screen of about 30 minutes, I had a longer hiring-manager conversation of roughly an hour. It centered on how I ran deals: sales methodology, deal cycles, and handling objections. The final stage stood out most. In a panel, I performed a mock cold call or role-play and then gave a deeper walkthrough of past numbers. That round was the most demanding, and it felt closest to testi…
Interview experiences · Phenom
Phenom Software Engineer interview experience
The interviews began smoothly and felt friendly, especially in the panel setting. Still, the questions were more demanding than I expected. Discussions of my experience made clear they wanted more than surface familiarity. In the final assessment, the feedback turned on system-design fit. That surprised me because it did not seem strongly aligned with what I had demonstrated, and it felt made up…
Interview experiences · Philips
Philips Software Engineer interview: rushed panel logistics
My process had three rounds and felt like a quick sprint. I began with a phone screen, then had a virtual one-on-one with a manager, and finally a panel with several interviewers. The panel was not smooth: one person was on time, another arrived late, and one never appeared. I was also pushed to begin the next round immediately, so the flow felt rushed and poorly planned. The questions themselves…
Interview experiences · Phonepe
Phonepe Software Engineer interview: DSA and order-feed design
After a recruiter-style touchpoint, the process became technical quickly. I had a machine-coding round on a hackathon platform with a live panel and several candidates on the call. The interviewer gave the problem, I worked alone in a tight window of about 90 minutes in one phase, and I sent my working solution to the recruiter in a zip file. Soon afterward, an interviewer reviewed my work in a r…
Interview experiences · Physical Intelligence
Physical Intelligence Software Engineer Interview Experience — Hand-Coding a Cache, Then a 90-Minute Mini Project Running 4-5 AI Agents
I'm still in the process, so I'll mainly go over the flow and format of each round. After mass-applying, the first round was a 45-minute HM round, mostly chatting about my background. Then 1h of hand-coding. They provided a VS Code SSH environment and a project skeleton. HR had told me ahead of time that the rough scope would be backend and DB related, and in the end it was mainly implementing a…
Interview experiences · Pilot
Pilot New Grad Software Engineer Interview Experience — Passed the ICC Screen, Then Turned It Down
The first round went by quickly and I got the contract offer — March 16th, in Python. I heard the batch is about 15 people per batch. Some background on me: Ivy League school, ECE switching into tech, class of 2026, new grad, no internships, GPA 3.8, a few ML school projects. I've been going for SE/SDE/SWE roles and honestly feel like I don't have much in the way of skills or experience. I went t…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Account Executive interview: consecutive sales interviews
After the recruiter screen, I had three interviews in a row, with behavioral questions mixed with more technical prompts. There was almost no downtime between conversations, so I had to stay sharp throughout. The middle conversation was with the hiring manager, followed by two peer interviews. One leaned more technical and the other more toward behavioral fit. The difficulty felt fairly even. It…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Data Scientist Interview Experience — A Restaurant Reservation Coding Question and a Deep-Dive Stats Round
I felt like the whole interview experience was really good — the interviewers listened carefully, and there wasn't that "gotta beat you down" attitude some interviewers have. Two of the rounds felt somewhat difficult to me. coding: Not counting the resume intro, small talk, and the interviewer showing up late, the actual working time was about 30 minutes. The question involved a nested dictionary…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Data Scientist Interview Experience — Five Rounds Interrupted by a Recruiter Conflict
I had a really bizarre interview experience. Pinterest VO: it was originally supposed to be 5 rounds back-to-back in one day, but on the day of the interview the recruiter said there was a conflict. I only did three rounds, and the other two got rescheduled to two days later. Round 1: use case / analytical system design. The interviewer was a DS manager. He laid out a simple problem statement and…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Data Scientist Interview Experience — L5 Loop with Five Onsite Rounds and a BQ-Heavy XFN
Let me start with the overall timeline. I interviewed for a level 5 position: one round of phone screen, five rounds of onsite, and two rounds of team matching. The whole process took about a month, and after that I waited 2-3 days for the offer. Here's the general picture of how it went. Overall the interview had some real difficulty to it. The technical part was SQL plus Python. The SQL was on…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Data Scientist Interview Experience — Two SQL Questions and Similar Pins in Python
I'm sharing the questions I encountered in a Pinterest technical interview. I've organized them to give back, and I hope this helps anyone preparing! The descriptions below are reconstructed from memory. I've simplified the field names; these aren't word-for-word copies of the original questions. SQL: The top two categories by engagement rate in each country (I don't quite remember exactly how ma…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Intern Machine Learning Engineer Interview Experience — 70-Minute CodeSignal OA with Hand-Written Bagging and Naive Bayes
Based in Toronto. Looks like several teams were hiring at the same time, mostly on the search/ads/recommendations side. HR reached out on LinkedIn, and after I submitted my resume and cover letter they sent me an OA. 70 minutes, 10 questions, done on CodeSignal — 6 multiple choice, 1 coding question, and 2 ML engineering questions. The multiple choice questions were mostly ML fundamentals: the de…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Machine Learning Engineer interview: ML theory and quick rejection
The loop was short but rough. In the initial conversation, I tried to explain my projects, but the interviewer did not seem willing to listen. I then had a technical machine-learning session covering core theory, including vanishing gradients and ensemble methods such as bagging and boosting. There was also a LeetCode-style problem for about 30 minutes. The process ended quickly, and I received a…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Senior Site Reliability Engineer Interview Experience — Phone Screen With a Four-Part GET Request and IP Counting Task, Then Silence
I have no SRE experience, but I have 7 years as a cloud SDE and I've always been part of the oncall rotation. I was recently laid off and I'm in a hurry to find a job. Pinterest didn't have a role that fit me especially well, so I just applied to a Senior SRE role to try my luck, and I got a phone screen invitation. The recruiter said the early questions would be similar to LeetCode coding proble…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Debt-Settlement Variant of LC 465
Position: SR. Software Engineer A one-hour phone screen, and the question was a variant of LC 465 — it felt like it needed the accounting concept of settling balances, and if you hadn't seen something like this before you probably couldn't have gotten it. The problem was roughly this: a group of friends goes on a trip, and you're given a list of transactions. Each one has a payer, an amount, and…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Senior Staff Software Engineer (Backend Infra) Interview Experience — Rejected After a Vague K8s Scheduling Tech Depth Round
Backend Infra The recruiter reached out to me. We chatted about my background, the company culture, that kind of thing. Remote work is allowed, the team does team-building events, and important meetings require you to be onsite. The second round was a chat with the hiring manager, mostly behavioral: am I currently employed, why do I want to leave. Then we went over my background, what I've done o…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Senior+ Data Scientist Interview Experience — A 30-Slide Case Round in One Hour
Overall, Pinterest's interviews really emphasize solid technical fundamentals. Stats, case, and coding all felt like final exams — the questions were dense and numerous, and they went really deep and got into a lot of detail. Most important thing is you could tell they had a specific correct answer in mind — even if you got most of the way there but didn't land on the exact right answer, the inte…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Senior+ Data Scientist Interview Experience — Five-Round Onsite Loop Ends in Rejection
Fresh rejection writeup — I just did a virtual onsite for a Staff Data Scientist role at Pinterest. (1) Coding: SQL joining three tables to calculate, for each country, the category with the most impressions, and to calculate the heavy user rate (heavy user defined as active at least 4 days in the past week, with at least 3 features used on one of those days). There was also a simple Python quest…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Software Engineer interview experience
The technical screen was difficult in a specific way: it was a LeetCode medium-to-hard problem with about an hour to solve it. I could receive hints, but was still expected to reach the solution myself instead of relying on help. Even with collaboration allowed, the clock mattered heavily. I did not progress to an offer, and the high bar left the familiar feeling that being almost there was not e…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Software Engineer Interview Experience — An Elevator Problem With a Follow-up That Was Basically a Second Question
Two weeks ago I did the phone screen for Pinterest, and I still haven't heard anything, so let me post the question while I wait. The recruiter told me beforehand that this round would just be one coding question, and at the time I felt pretty relaxed — I figured forty-five minutes for one problem would be plenty either way. Turns out I was being naive. The question was this: given a set of eleva…
Interview experiences · Pinterest
Pinterest Software Engineer Interview Experience — Full Loop, Rejected on the Newly Added AI Coding Round
Phone screen: LeetCode 1055 It was split into two parts. Part 1 only checks whether the target can be formed at all; once that ran and passed, I did the second part. For Part 2 I first tried recursion + greedy, but it had a bug and couldn't guarantee the optimal solution. After fixing that I wrote a recursive version that passed. But the interviewer wanted an iterative approach, so the rest was t…