Coursera Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 144 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Coursera.
Coursera
Software Engineer
Intern Difficult Positive experience Accept offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Phone screen Technical screen Phone screen Offer
Interview formats
Technical Behavioral
I had a phone screen, then a tough Leetcode regex question, another phone screen, and then they gave me an offer. The whole process is pretty easy to find info about online.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Can you tell me about your experience?
- Could you solve this hard regex question from Leetcode (similar to a previous one)?
Coursera
Software Engineer
Senior Difficult Neutral experience No offer 6 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Coding Coding Technical System Design Behavioral Behavioral
There were about 6 rounds in total. It started with a screening coding round, which involved problems around hash maps and string manipulations. Then there was another coding round focused on string manipulations. After that, a code review round where they asked me to review some code they had written. A system design round followed, where I had to add to an existing system. This round was tough because I had to understand the system, and it was described poorly on paper. Then a deep dive round, focusing on technical problems I've worked on. Finally, a manager discussion, which was similar to the deep dive but also covered other behavioral aspects.
Confirmed questions0 questions
No confirmed questions were included in this interview report.
Coursera
Software Engineer
Mid Average Negative experience No offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Take home Phone screen Onsite Offer
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral Technical
I was contacted by external recruiters to start. The first step was an optional call with the internal recruiter, who seemed completely disengaged and rushed the conversation, dodging my questions. Then, I had to choose between a take-home assignment or a live coding session; I opted for the take-home, which was quite involved. Following that, there was a hiring manager call focusing on behavioral aspects. The onsite round consisted of four interviews, all technical except for one with the hiring manager. I was ultimately rejected without any feedback, and only found out through the external recruiters. Despite months invested in this frustrating process, no feedback was provided. To add to the frustration, the internal recruiter never replied to any of my emails during the two months I was in the interview process.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- The take-home assignment required creating a ranked voting system.
- Questions asked during the onsite interviews were under NDA.
Coursera Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Coursera interview reports.
“Determine if one string is a substring of another, considering that '.' can substitute any character, and '?' can either replace a character or serve as an additional symbol.”
Read reports →“Implement the `findRankedWinner` method that takes a map of ballots and integers and returns a string.”
Read reports →“Given N songs and a list length L (L > N), where a song can only be repeated after K songs have played, how many unique lists can be created, modulo 10^9 + 7?”
Read reports →“Given a prefix string, a full word string, and a suffix string, determine which is longer, the prefix or the suffix, in relation to the full word.”
Read reports →“Given a list of numbers, count for each number how many elements to its right are smaller.”
Read report →“What is the minimum cost to reduce an array to a single element through a series of moves?”
Read report →“Find the candidate with the "popular vote," meaning they received the most first-choice votes from voters.”
Read report →“Mark wants to create a playlist of L songs from N available songs for a trip. The playlist must satisfy two conditions: each song must be played at least once, and a song can only be repeated after at least K other distinct songs have been played. How many distinct playlists can Mark create? Please provide the answer modulo 1,000,000,007, given N, K, and L.”
Read report →“Given pairs (xi,yi) where if xi<xj and yi<yj, (xj,yj) is said to dominate (xi,yi), what is the count of indomitable pairs?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 144 Coursera interview reports.