OneStudyTeam Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

Started with a recruiter chat about my background, experience, career goals, and salary expectations. Then had a technical discussion with an Engineering Director, again covering my background and experience, plus a quick system design question. After that, there was a coding interview (I chose backend) where I had to write a service to handle requests from a provided frontend, using ngrok to expose it. This was followed by a technical chat with two senior/staff engineers, focusing on past experiences and technical topics like testing. Finally, I spoke with the manager, who indicated an offer was likely and a team had been found for me. This last chat was a chance to learn about the career structure and team's focus and objectives.

It was a slow, deliberate interview process, taking about 7 weeks and 6 interviews. Part of the timeline was due to me pacing things out as I applied elsewhere and wanting to live more mindfully, but they also added a bonus interview because I was borderline and they wanted to see more. Throughout it all, the interviewers were really kind and understanding. I didn't feel pressured, just the normal interview nerves, and they were really supportive. Even during the coding part, which I loved, I was just joking around with the interviewer like we'd known each other forever.

The interview process started with a recruiter phone screen, followed by a 60-minute talk with an engineering manager. Then, there was a 90-minute live pair coding interview that included a code review. After that, I had a 60-minute high-level technical discussion with two engineers, and finally, another 60-minute talk with an engineering manager. The interview part felt pretty fair and fun, giving me a good vibe about the engineering team. But, the offer part was sadly not great. After the last interview, I got a voicemail late on Friday asking to chat on Saturday (working weekends is a red flag for me). We finally talked on Monday, and I got a verbal offer that would expire by the end of Wednesday. They denied my request for more time and said they could call back in a few weeks. The offer was $135k, which seemed low. I felt like the exploding offer was just to rush me into taking a lowball offer, and the 'call back later' was to see if I got other offers.