Hearth Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process included a take-home assignment, a technical interview, and a system design interview. It required backend or frontend knowledge depending on the stack applied for. Then there was a PM, VP, and CEO interview. The total time commitment was about 6 to 9 hours.

It was a 4 round process plus a take home coding challenge that spanned about 5 and a half weeks. Follow up time was usually longer than I was told, often taking over a week instead of the promised 2-3 days. The take-home test was a cool challenge and I liked everyone I talked to. The final round, an in-person visit, didn't go well. The head of engineering was nice and showed me my potential workspace, discussed culture, and even asked about monitor preferences. But the CEO, who was supposed to be there, didn't show up and we interviewed remotely instead. Something must have gone wrong because a week later I got a generic rejection from the recruiter, with no specific feedback. This was frustrating because I felt I'd passed all the technical and culture parts, and the rejection came at the last minute with no explanation. It was even more annoying that the recruiter's email was suddenly unmonitored, which felt like a lie. After 5 weeks, some simple feedback like 'the CEO didn't like your answer to X' would have been appreciated. If the CEO has the final say, they should be involved earlier. Any company taking up so much time should at least provide real feedback.

I was contacted by a recruiter, then had a recruiter screen. After that, I was given a coding challenge with 1 coding question and 1 SQL question, which took me about 1.5 hours. The onsite interview was 3 hours long. The role was for a Backend Engineer developing an internal tool and general backend needs. Hearth has a small engineering department (about 17 people total), so engineers handle a bit of everything. The onsite consisted of a 1-hour IPv6 question (which they told me to prepare for), a 1-hour system design interview, a 30-minute behavioral interview, and a 30-minute chat with the VP of engineering. Everyone was really nice, accommodating, and easy to talk to. Hearth seems to have smart, competent, and fast engineers who fit the startup mold – they're self-starters, work hard, do a bit of everything, are always learning, and are usually busy but not overworked. It seems like Hearth does value work-life balance.