PolyAI Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 20 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at PolyAI.
PolyAI
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Easy Positive experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding
Applied for Senior Software Dev (Runtime). Screening felt rushed with limited role insight (likely due to hiring volume). Coding interview lost time to intro questions; solved anagram problem with basic approach and partial optimisation, but ran short on time. Some ambiguity around acceptable AI use. Didn’t progress to system design stage, which seems more critical for the role. In hindsight: move faster through small talk and treat coding and system design as separate focuses.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Create a function that Returns true if the inputs are an anagram of each other, and false if they are not.
PolyAI
Software Engineer
Entry Average Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Take home Phone screen
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral
Applied on Linkedin, first spoke with a recruiter and had a good chat. Then was told about a take-home coding task that was described as 'straightforward,' but turned out to be 4 questions (2 easy, 1 medium, 1 hard) to be completed in 60 minutes. I finished all of them but had 2/6 test cases fail on the hard one. This question seemed difficult on purpose because the environment had errors when I tried to add debug prints and a video animation played during test runs. I got an 86% score. The recruiter then mentioned reviewing my submission and asked for my availability for the next interview, which I provided for the following week. By mid-week, I hadn't heard back, so I updated my availability and emailed the recruiter. The recruiter then sent a generic rejection. I'm not upset about the difficulty, but more that they might have changed their mind after inviting me. Also, the recruiter didn't send the task until I asked.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Can you tell me what ownership means to you?
PolyAI
Software Engineer
Mid Average Positive experience Accept offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical Coding
I had a phone screening with a manager where we talked about my background and the job details. Then, there were two technical interviews with engineers. The first was about APIs, where I coded and followed documentation for about 45 minutes. The second technical interview was a 45-minute algorithmic question in Python, relevant to the work. Finally, I had a 30-45 minute chat with the founder, where I could ask questions about the company and the role.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Can you explain how you would build a predictive autocomplete feature for text input?
PolyAI Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from PolyAI interview reports.
“Create a function that Returns true if the inputs are an anagram of each other, and false if they are not.”
Read reports →“Given the API documentation for a well-known website, write code to utilize it.”
Read reports →“Could you implement binary addition?”
Read reports →“What would you use instead on cronjobs for a Big Data task”
Read reports →“In the context of Big Data tasks, what alternatives to cronjobs would you consider?”
Read report →“Can you explain how you would build a predictive autocomplete feature for text input?”
Read report →“Can you tell me what ownership means to you?”
Read report →“Can you provide two LeetCode questions that are considered hard?”
Read report →“Can you tell me what you know about PolyAI?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 20 PolyAI interview reports.