Clear Street Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

It was a long process, they took 6 rounds and told me everything was good. Then stopped communication and after few days the recruiter mentioned they are going for some other candidate. This experience have left a sour taste in my mouth, Anyone who is going to interview just clarify right in the begining how many rounds will be there. For my future self I have decided if anyone says more then 3 I am going to remove my candidature.

I really enjoyed my interview with the developers; they were super collaborative and gave me helpful hints when I was stuck. The machine coding round involved a grid-based problem, which I managed to solve, although it was a bit of a struggle since it was my first time doing one. Afterward, we discussed performance optimizations and the reasoning behind my approach. I got positive feedback, and honestly, this is how frontend interviews should be – build something real and then dive into the details of improving it! I wish I had prepared more, as the interviewers made it seem like a great company.

I had an initial Google Meets call with an HR person who said they liked my resume and wanted to chat to see if I'd be a good fit. They mentioned that if we moved forward, there'd be a coding interview over Google Meets, followed by an onsite interview with no coding, but it would be system design. After that, they decided to move ahead and set up the coding interview on Google Meets, which I felt went well. Then they scheduled my onsite day, with four engineers from the team. A few days before that second round, they emailed saying one engineer couldn't make it, so they wanted to schedule a call with him the day before for 'a coding interview,' which I thought was odd. The morning of that call, I logged in and it was a different engineer, the one they had scheduled couldn't attend. It turned out to be a behavioral interview, no coding or system design. The next day, I traveled four hours from my college town to their city for the onsite. I met three engineers: two for coding interviews and one for system design. Apparently, their HR policy is to always set up a coding interview interface, even though they told me otherwise. At the end, the same HR guy said they'd update me 'next week' and I could reach out with questions. Weeks passed with no word. I emailed the HR guy, no response. I reiterated my interest, and still nothing. They never sent a rejection or replied to my emails after the onsite. I was polite and responsive, but they didn't return that respect.