Gradle Technologies Backend Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I had an intro meeting with HR, then I was given a home code project that was supposed to take about 12 hours, which it did. Two days after I submitted it, they told me they weren't moving forward with me. They offered a meeting with HR to go over the feedback from the engineers. HR read the feedback, but couldn't explain any of it, and I wasn't allowed to get it in text. The feedback was detailed, but a lot of it was about the frontend, which wasn't relevant for a backend engineer role. I guess implementing a minimal frontend was a mistake. They also said I missed some requirements that weren't even in the spec. It would have been good to discuss this with an engineer, but I didn't get to speak to one. This whole experience felt like university all over again, making me feel worthless. I don't want to know what kind of company culture leads to this. HR was nice though.

The hiring process kicks off with a 1-hour presentation from the SVP of engineering covering product, teams, and the hiring process. While the presentations were generally interesting and useful, it was a bit of a one-sided conversation where they didn't seem interested in learning about my background. The next step involved a coding project: building a web application based on PDF instructions, expected to take about twelve hours. I had 4 days to submit it, and it needed to be done in a specific web framework, which was new to me. After submission, my application was rejected. Upon requesting feedback, I learned that the actual requirements were unclear and differed significantly from the instructions. They expected a fully polished, production-ready, bug-free project with comprehensive tests (unit to top-level), and some unspecified use cases not clearly stated or even possible within the given instructions. So far, they showed minimal interest in my experience. It's unfortunate they expect significant time for the project but don't engage in a meaningful conversation, which felt disrespectful.

It started with a recruiter call, then a 30m technical interview with basic questions. After that, there was a take-home project that was supposed to take 6-8 hours, but it ended up taking way more like 12-24 hours. This project involved a poorly documented service framework, a quirky downstream API, a documented list of tradeoffs and decisions, and a pretty long list of requirements. The process continued with a 30m technical interview where they reviewed the take-home project, and then a final 30m technical interview. Their full interview process is documented somewhere on the website.