McMaster-Carr Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So the whole thing started with a recruiter call, then I had to share a project with them. After that, there was a technical chat with an engineer, not coding though, just talking. Then the final step was a full day of onsite interviews. My impression is it's a good place to grow, but it's pretty intense and you always need to be performing at your best to avoid being laid off. Everyone seemed nice during the interviews, but be aware that the coding part of the final day focuses heavily on web dev, so if that's not your strong suit, it might be tough.

A recruiter hit me up on LinkedIn. Booking the interview was self-serve and straightforward. I also applied on their website myself. The first interview was with the hiring manager after the virtual screen. It was pretty chill, mostly checking for cultural fit, and I got to ask my own questions. The company's setup is different from the usual downtown tech scene, so it was cool to learn how they do things. After that, there were more technical interviews, focusing on standard college-level algorithms and math problems. The whole process felt efficient, giving enough time to prep without dragging on. Unfortunately, the role was primarily .NET, which didn't align with my preferred tech stack.

The interview process began with an HR phone screen, followed by a technical phone screen. Then there was an on-site interview which lasted about 4 hours. This on-site included 3 technical interviews where they dug into my previous projects, looking for potential weaknesses or discussing design trade-offs. One interviewer, who was a director, had a very strange and abrupt communication style. They seemed to be trying hard to show off their knowledge, even going as far as to incorrectly state that Go routines don't use shared memory, when in fact they do! This was a major red flag for me. Despite this, most of the other interviewers were easy to talk to, and the overall process felt pretty relaxed. I mostly used a whiteboard to explain my past project designs.