Cross River Bank Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

It was a pretty normal and friendly HR chat. The person interviewing me was cool and they told me exactly what they were looking for and the perks of working there. They did mention that they're pretty serious about their work and that their hiring process is "super tough Leetcode style". In the end, they didn't go with me for reasons I'm not sure of.

I had a recruiter call first, then spoke with the hiring manager, followed by a pair interview with my potential teammates. The hiring manager asked about my background and experience, specifically my knowledge of NServiceBus & Terraform. I mentioned I hadn't used them but am always keen to learn new skills quickly. During the pair interview, I answered many questions and solved problems, doing well on all. Near the end, one interviewer also asked about my NServiceBus & Terraform experience, and I gave the same response about being eager to learn. I was later rejected, and upon inquiry, it was revealed that my lack of experience with NServiceBus & Terraform was the deciding factor. This was known from the start by the hiring manager, who still proceeded with the interview process for about 2 hours.

I interviewed with Cross River Bank for a senior software engineer role on their card processing team. My interactions with the recruiter and hiring manager were good, but the overall interview process wasn't great. Because I had a referral, I skipped the initial recruiter call and went straight to an interview with the engineering manager for the team. We discussed Cross River's business and its position relative to companies like Stripe and Plaid. The manager also asked about my experience with Go and microservices, and I got to ask my questions about the team's work. Next up was a take-home project, which is where things got complicated. The project was described as a '1-2 hour' task with two main parts and a bonus. It required implementing something in Go, showing familiarity with cloud devops tools, and using shell scripting. Two issues arose: First, I received an automated rejection email despite having ongoing communication about the project. I later learned this was a system error, and the recruiter apologized, mentioning they were on vacation when it happened. So, if you get an unexpected rejection, it's worth replying to check if it's a mistake. Second, there was conflicting information about using AI tools. The take-home instructions said using ChatGPT as a reference was okay if disclosed. Since I was still learning Go and wanted to finish the 'quick' project, I used it for research and disclosed it, but didn't copy-paste code. I spent hours researching and ensuring I understood the suggestions, adapting them for my implementation. I was eventually rejected, and the recruiter offered a call for feedback. I hoped to get specific advice on improving my Go code, but the feedback was that my use of ChatGPT showed I wasn't proficient enough. While I understand the concern about proficiency, I couldn't get concrete feedback on my actual implementation, which was frustrating. My advice is to avoid referencing AI tools for senior roles, as it seems to override your own work.