Hulu Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 117 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Hulu.
Hulu
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Difficult Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Technical screen Offer
Interview formats
Coding Technical
Had an initial call with HR about the role. Then, a 1-hour phone call where I was sent a Hackerrank link. I got a Leetcode Hard problem, a word ladder, that I solved using BFS within the time limit. The interviewer seemed impressed and said I'd hear back soon from HR. Unfortunately, after a couple of days with no word, I got an automated rejection email stating they were moving on with other candidates. This was frustrating because I solved the problem correctly and within the time limit. No other questions were asked, so I don't understand the rejection. My advice to Hulu's hiring team is to be more considerate of candidates' time, especially those with 2-3 years of experience applying for senior roles. I'd recommend others avoid Hulu.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Solve a word ladder problem using BFS.
Hulu
Software Engineer
Mid Difficult Positive experience No offer 6 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite Presentation Background check Offer
Interview formats
Behavioral Coding System Design Presentation
It started with an HR interview with typical questions. Then I did two coding exercises with two different engineers. I flew in for a 5-hour onsite interview. The first part was a chat with a product manager about how Hulu operates, which had a lot of behavioral questions. Next, I had a system design question with an engineer, in an unfamiliar area. We took a lunch break and chatted with an engineer. After lunch, I had a coding exercise with the same engineer. I struggled with the problem, and he also had some difficulty explaining it. The following interview was another system design problem, focusing on building and extending data structures. The final interview was one more system design problem, this one emphasizing scalability. The questions were challenging but fair, mostly system design. I really enjoyed the engineers and the office. The only downside was not getting any feedback.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Focus on system design fundamentals.
Hulu
Software Engineer
Mid Difficult Negative experience Decline offer 6 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Onsite
Interview formats
Technical Coding System Design Behavioral
The interview was the standard phone call with hr, 1 tech screen in coderpad via the phone, and lastly onsite interview that consisted of 4 rounds : 2 coding, 1 design, and 1 behavior questions. The process was not setup smoothly, the interviewer missed my phone interview twice, and just brushed it off. The onsite interview was okay except during the interview with the architect, he mentioned that he wasn't impressed with the school I went to which was kind of surprising to me since nobody really speaks to me about school anymore .. Also during the design question with architect he wanted me to calculate the rpms and wanted me to do it in head which I thought was a bit unfair since we were dealing with very large numbers. Overall the experience was slow and unorganized. The people that work at Hulu seemed stuck up and condescending . I don't recommend. If you have the skill to get in might as well try google, facebook, amazon instead.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Can you design Hulu's streaming limit functionality across devices?
- How would you implement a linked list?
- Explain XML parsing.
Hulu Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Hulu interview reports.
“Given an iterator to the next node of a parsed XML file, convert the XML file into a tree.”
Read reports →“Find sequences of integers in a sorted array of integers. For example, given [4,5,7,9,10,12], return [4,5], [7], [9,10],[12].”
Read reports →“Find the number that only appears once in an array of random integers from negative infinity to infinity, where all other numbers appear twice.”
Read reports →“How would you reconstruct a binary tree given its array representation in pre-order traversal?”
Read reports →“Could you search the kth largest number in a sorted 2D matrix?”
Read report →“Could you design a JavaScript function that, given a namespace string like "abc.def.hij", creates that namespace structure so that abc.def.hij evaluates to an empty object?”
Read report →“Can you write a power function that calculates a raised to the power of b?”
Read report →“Given a URI, can you explain how to normalize it, for example, simplifying /a/../b/c to /b/c?”
Read report →“Can you explain how to verify if a sequence of numbers represents a preorder traversal of a Binary Search Tree (BST)?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 117 Hulu interview reports.