Bolt Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 64 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Bolt.
Bolt
Software Engineer
Senior Average Positive experience Decline offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Onsite Offer
Interview formats
Coding Technical System Design Behavioral
It was the usual technical interview process. Started with a hackerrank problem, then code review, then system design, and finally a behavioral chat with the hiring manager and tech lead. Nice experience overall, but they were slow to respond after each round, sometimes taking up to a week. I got a low offer so I passed.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Solve this hackerrank problem
- Review this code
- System design
Bolt
Software Engineer
Senior Easy Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Behavioral Coding Technical
The interview process started with a recruiter call. When I asked about salary, they said it was 'in the senior range,' which was strange since the role was for a senior position. It felt like the recruiter wasn't sure about the role or who they were interviewing. Next, I had a call with software engineers where I had to complete an easy HackerRank task with unclear requirements. My advice is not to get bogged down in details, or you'll be marked down for lacking focus and efficiency. Don't bother making your code reusable or extensible, as there's no incentive for it. Just use basic loops and finish quickly. Don't waste time on things like good variable naming, which you'd expect from a senior engineer. One of the engineers kept interrupting me while I was coding, pointing out obvious syntax errors, which was annoying because I had to acknowledge them instead of just fixing them. The HackerRank task itself was something a student could solve, and there was no reward for optimizing or deeply understanding the problem, only for passing the tests without worrying about time or memory complexity. Also, once you book an interview, you can't reschedule through the link; you have to rebook entirely. I found this out too late and had to take the interview when I was tired. Given all this, consider if a company that rewards suboptimal solutions is a good fit for you. If you believe in catching problems early to fix them cheaply, I strongly advise against applying.
Confirmed questions6 questions
- Can you explain how an HTTP request works?
- What happens step-by-step after typing a URL and hitting enter?
- What is a reverse proxy?
Bolt
Software Engineer
Mid Average Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical Coding System Design
The interview process had 3 rounds. First round was with HR, we talked about the company and they asked about me and my past jobs, lasted 20 minutes. Second round was the first technical interview, where I was asked about security issues and had to write an algorithm, this lasted 75 minutes. Third round was the second technical interview, which included general system design questions and I wrote another algorithm, lasting 90 minutes.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Can you explain Http and https, DNS, and cryptography, hashing?
- Write an algorithm like leetcode of medium difficulty.
- Tell me about system design questions about systems.
Bolt Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Bolt interview reports.
“Can you determine if a string contains all unique characters with identical frequencies, such as 'aabbcc' being valid while 'aabbccc' is not?”
Read reports →“Given an array of positive integers A and a target T, please find a continuous subarray of A that sums up to T.”
Read reports →“Can you reverse the words within a character array without using additional array space?”
Read reports →“Design a rate limiter for two REST endpoints that use an API key for authentication and run on a single server.”
Read reports →“Can you propose a more efficient solution for finding an anagram of string B within string A?”
Read report →“Can you explain what happens when you press Enter in a browser's address bar?”
Read report →“What is the Big O complexity of the approach you've devised for finding an anagram of string B in string A?”
Read report →“Can you explain the difference between ES6 arrow functions and traditional functions?”
Read report →“In the second coding interview, given an array of stock prices for N days, what's the maximum profit you can make with at most one transaction?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 64 Bolt interview reports.