Cohere Health Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process included an online assessment with coding and debugging questions, followed by a chat with the technical recruiter, and then a conversation with the engineering manager. There was also a take-home assessment. These were the only parts that happened, even though I thought there would be more technical and team-matching rounds.

The interview process was straightforward, though it moved at a leisurely pace. It involved four stages in total, beginning with an online assessment (OA). Following the OA, there was an initial conversation and then two technical interviews. The entire hiring journey spanned three weeks due to their slow turnaround time. While I performed well and reached the final stage, unfortunately, I wasn't selected in the end.

It started with a 30-minute call with HR/Recruiter. Then there was a 45-minute online coding assessment where I could choose my language. It had 3 questions; the first two were easy, but the last one was a tricky binary question with an obvious but less efficient answer and a clever, better answer. After that, I had a 1-hour call with the hiring manager to go over the role and the third assessment question. I didn't get the better answer initially, so we worked through it. Next, I was given a take-home system design problem due in 24-48 hours. Finally, there was a 1-hour call with the hiring manager again to discuss my system design solution. They initially said this would be two hours and involve more people, but that changed. They mentioned potentially having me talk to someone else on the team afterward, but that didn't happen. The interview wasn't too hard overall; most above-average backend engineers should do fine. The job seemed good with aggressive hiring plans, though the company is still small. Benefits were worse than my current place but average overall, and the salary range was good. I was disappointed because I'm more front-end focused, but the interview leaned heavily towards back-end later on. Even after telling the recruiter and hiring manager, the HM asked in the fifth round if I was more front-end. I was upset they didn't listen earlier, wasting my prep time when they could have told me they needed back-end/architecture skills sooner. I didn't realize this until round 4. Cohere didn't connect me with anyone else, which was concerning as I only knew the hiring manager. The HM seemed nice but also a bit intimidating, and I didn't get good vibes about working with him, especially during the system design interview.