CJ Affiliate Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I was referred by an employee and after about a month, an HR person gave me a call for a phone screen. A week later, I had a technical screen with the Director of Engineering. About another week after that, I did a small coding exercise using rextester.com, again with the Director of Engineering. Then, I was flown out to their main office for an in-person interview. I met the Director of Engineering and some lead engineers. The lead for the Chicago team was there briefly at the start but then I didn't see him again. We went over some technical questions. After that, I did a TDD exercise with some given models and interfaces. They wanted me to meet the Chicago team, but I had to catch my flight, so they scheduled a Google Hangouts call for the next week. About 30 minutes past the scheduled time, a member from the Chicago team called, saying people were sick and couldn't make it, so we'd need to reschedule. This was quite late in the day, and they hadn't contacted me earlier. During that call, the Chicago team member told me for the first time that the job requires working 11 am to 7 pm daily. The following week, the Google Hangout interview included team members from both HQ and Chicago. We had a lot of technical issues with Google Hangouts, and the interview felt disorganized. The Chicago lead, who wasn't present for the technical questions during my visit, asked more technical questions, followed by a new team member from HQ. With very little time left, the Chicago team had me do another quick programming task. They suddenly said they ran out of time and didn't mention any next steps. At that point, I emailed them to say I was no longer interested. Most of the team seemed nice and implied a good engineering environment. However, the Chicago lead always appeared annoyed, frustrated, and unhappy regarding the Chicago team. I was also surprised by the minimal time allocated for meeting the Chicago team. On top of everything, the whole process felt unorganized, took way too long, and I was asked to repeat the same tasks and questions multiple times.

So the interview process started with a phone call from a recruiter. After that, I scheduled a phone interview with a developer. I didn't make it to the next round, but I assume there's an in-person interview after that. It was a really positive experience overall. The recruiter was super helpful, always replying to my emails within 24 hours. I even had to reschedule my interview twice, and they were really cool about it, no problem. They also sent over a study guide to help me prepare. The developer I spoke with was also very patient and helpful.

Started with a recruiter chat, about 30 mins to see if we were a fit and what they needed. Then a 1-hour coding test, which was cool because they didn't do those weird algorithm questions. They had a different way to test you. The last round was a three-hour technical interview with parts for design, coding, and technical trivia. The people were great. They have their interview stuff all documented on GitHub, which is helpful if you want to do well.