BNSF Railway Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 443 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
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30 roles · 443 reportsCandidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at BNSF Railway.
BNSF Railway
Data Engineer
Mid Average Positive experience No offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Take home Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Technical Coding System Design Behavioral
The interview process was good. It started with an online assessment covering Pyspark and DevOps, followed by a review of that assessment. Then there was a full day of interviews that included Python, SQL, System Design, Technology, and Behavioral rounds. The whole thing took about 60 days, which seems reasonable given it was over the holidays and depended on available slots. The recruiter kept me informed and responded promptly. I'd do it again if a good role came up.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Can you share an instance where you had a disagreement with a more senior team member?
- Describe one of your technical strengths using language that a non-technical person could understand.
BNSF Railway
Data Scientist
Mid Easy Negative experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Take home
Interview formats
Technical
After applying, I received a Codility link for a 90-minute assessment with two questions. It felt like a waste of time because a quick look at my resume or GitHub would show I can do the job. I ended up quitting and withdrawing my application. I've had experiences with other Berkshire Hathaway companies where I spent significant time on assessments and interviews only to be told I was overqualified, and then later asked to apply for a lower-level role. While working there offers job stability, be prepared for a lot of bureaucracy and hoops to jump through.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Do some basic data cleaning and then apply a linear regression to housing data.
- Aggregate a few basic statistics about stock prices and then return a nested list of data frames formatted as requested.
BNSF Railway
Staff Software Engineer
Staff Average Neutral experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Take home Phone screen
Interview formats
Coding Technical
I applied for the job and then got set up for a coding test. It was an 80-minute test on Codility with 2 programming problems. The first one was tricky because the prompt was unclear and I couldn't ask questions. Also, Codility was slow, taking over 30 seconds to build and test my code, which was stressful and used up my time. Somehow, I passed all the tests after some effort. The second problem was easier and I finished it with time left. After passing, I had a recruiter call. They require you to be on-site in Fort Worth, TX for training and meetings. Unfortunately, I can't travel due to family reasons, so my application stopped there.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Can you build a mock user service that counts user visits?
- How would you implement a key/value store with get/set/count and transaction capabilities (begin/commit/rollback)?
BNSF Railway
Software Engineer
Senior Difficult Negative experience No offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Technical screen Onsite Background check Offer
Interview formats
Coding Technical System Design Behavioral
The process starts with a Codility test focused on Spring Boot, covering topics like caching, transactions, AOP, or Streams. Next, there's a code review with a senior engineer. After that, a full 5-hour interview loop takes place, including two technical coding challenges, a system design interview, a chat with the hiring manager, and an interview with someone from security. Despite completing the entire 5-hour session and reportedly doing well, the offer was denied for unclear reasons. Later, another recruiter reached out for a second Codility test, which was aced in half the time. However, the recruiter stated the score didn't meet the minimum requirement to advance. I strongly advise against pursuing opportunities at BNSF unless you fit their specific H1B demographic. The entire process from initial contact to the in-person interview took five weeks. BNSF is a complete waste of time; explore other options.
Confirmed questions7 questions
- What were the specifics of the Codility test regarding Spring Boot, caching, transactions, AOP, or Streams?
- Can you describe the code review process with the senior engineer?
- Tell me about the first technical coding challenge.
BNSF Railway Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from BNSF Railway interview reports.
“Could you use pySpark to read a table from a .csv file, perform a simple aggregation, and return the result as a dictionary?”
Read reports →“Can you count how often each word appears and find the one that shows up the most?”
Read reports →“Can you write the Spring Boot function to gather data from that same mock API?”
Read reports →“Can you implement a Springboot controller that handles HTTP requests based on the provided specifications? It needs to have 7 endpoints to support individual and list views for CRUD operations.”
Read reports →“How would you use Spring Boot's @Transactional annotation to implement varying service behaviors across multiple services? Make sure to handle rollback for different exceptions, timeouts, and failures.”
Read report →“Could you implement a table in Angular that pulls data from a mock API, and also add filtering and sorting to it?”
Read report →“Given a picture of a washed-out track section, explain how you would go about repairing it with a team of two people.”
Read report →“What's your method for preparing for courses to ensure you get a good final grade?”
Read report →“Can you tell me about a rule you believe is acceptable to break, or a rule you have actually broken?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 443 BNSF Railway interview reports.