MOO Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview was nice and enjoyable. It was 2.5 hours long. The first hour was a Pairing exercise where I was asked to add a simple CRUD functionality to an existing application. It was a really simple task for a senior, to add code to the router, controller, service, and repo layers and add unit tests and cucumber steps. The second hour was focused on System Design. I may have flopped this stage. But I'll give my approach: How would you build a simple application? For example, ordering pizza, ordering books, or a site to buy a limited edition Rolex watch. First, gather requirements by asking as many questions as possible to restrict the scope. They want to see your process. For the Rolex example: 1. User goes to the site, which is a single-page app. 2. The app makes an API call to a booking service to get the number of watches left. 3. If watches are available, the user selects the quantity. 4. The user adds delivery address and card details. 5. The FE app posts this info to the booking service. 6. The booking service first reserves watches, then attempts payment, then finalizes. If payment fails, it rolls back the reservation. Then, they asked questions like: How do you find the count of watches left? How do you distinguish between sold and reserved? How do you model the data in the DB? How do you model the data in this scenario? What changes would you make to add this functionality? The system will have many DB locks, how can you improve/reduce them? Finally, there were 30 minutes of HR Questions about how colleagues would describe me, an example of something I did, the best team I worked for, something I was proud of, and a time I went above and beyond for a customer.

The recruiter reached out on Hired and we chatted about the role and my background. Then, there was a technical phone interview, followed by a technical test, and finally a face-to-face interview after they reviewed the test. These first three steps took over two months. Getting feedback or setting up the next step was really tough and took a long time, usually 2-3 weeks between each stage. The technical phone call was great, I really enjoyed talking to the engineer who asked about my experience and projects. They moved me to a technical test where I had to build an address book API. After that, I had an onsite interview with two parts: first, a cultural interview where we discussed scenarios and past experiences (one interviewer was the same person from the phone call), and second, a technical part where they asked more technical questions, reviewed my API test, and we worked through a whiteboard problem. A few days later, they called to say they weren't hiring for the junior role anymore, but an interviewer liked me and suggested I try for a different team. I had another face-to-face interview with that team, which was about an hour long and included both technical and cultural questions. The overall experience was just okay, mainly because of the long waits between stages and the lack of feedback even after two in-person meetings.

The process kicked off with a recruiter screen, followed by an interview with the hiring manager. Then there was a take-home coding challenge, after which I had a technical interview focusing on system design with two engineers. Lastly, there was a culture fit interview. The company's values and culture really came through in my interactions with the colleagues I met, who were all friendly and approachable.