Bolt Interview Questions
& Process

This was a pretty thorough interview process, 5 steps in total, and honestly one of the best recruiting experiences I've had. My recruiter, Irina, was super responsive and open about everything. She kept me updated, let me know exactly what to expect for each part, and made sure I had all the info I needed about the job, the team, the company vibe, and the interviews themselves. The first iOS theory interview was tough but interesting. I didn't make it past the second coding round, but even then, thanks to Irina, the experience stayed really positive. What really stood out was how she handled the feedback part. Normally, when I'm rejected, recruiters just disappear, but Irina set up a call and went through everything constructively. Even though I didn't get the job this time, the process felt clear and fair, and I really appreciated how they communicated and supported me. It was super professional, and I'd totally consider applying again.

The interview process here is really long, stretching about 6-8 weeks. The managers seem incompetent, never having worked in devops or SRE roles themselves. They tend to cover up their mistakes and can't manage time well, even lying to HR about hiring progress and giving false feedback. This puts you in a tough spot where your word is against theirs from the start. The team culture is toxic, and they disregard laws about on-call limits. They don't use safe deployment methods like blue-green or canary, pushing everything straight to production and then scrambling to fix issues. They expect SREs to have DBA-level knowledge and to fix developer mistakes in production by running queries directly. The salary, initially quoted up to 6700 EUR, is much lower in the final offer. There are many reports of this happening, where they lure you in and then hope you'll accept a lower offer after investing months. They're also under pressure to meet profitability targets for 2025 and aim for an IPO in 2026, which means everyone is stressed.

Applied via LinkedIn and a recruiter reached out quickly. She was helpful explaining the rounds. The first round was a live coding session. They suggested preparing with LeetCode medium problems, which I did, but the interview question was simpler. I got a bit nervous and struggled initially, but I finished and optimized it well, passing all test cases. However, I was lost on the theory questions. Who really knows how TLS works internally? I was told I lacked depth in networking security and was suspected of copy-pasting during the live coding, which is strange as they should ask for screen sharing instead of assuming.

It was a strange recruiting experience. First, I had a meeting with the recruiter where they asked basic questions and a few quick data science ones, but the interaction felt off. They then said the next step would be a technical interview, which contradicted their email that mentioned a take-home assignment. I did have the technical interview, and it was actually handled really well. I had a good conversation with the interviewer, and I felt like they wanted me to do well. I received feedback that the technical interview went very positively, but they were waiting on a decision from the hiring manager before moving forward. This was over a month ago, and I haven't heard anything since, so I assume it's been dropped for some reason. Glad we both wasted our time.