Principal Financial Group Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I applied and got a HireVue about 2 weeks later, which was the first round. It had 12 questions, some video, some text, unlimited attempts and prep time. Standard behavioral questions like tmay and why principal. Then, 4 days after submitting the HireVue, I got a final round. This round was a mix of behavioral and technical. The behavioral part had common questions like tmay, challenge faced, feedback and how you responded, and current project. The technical part was a live coding question, simple, easier than leetcode easy. I didn't do great but I talked through my process and they gave a lot of hints and let me google syntax. Then, 3 business days after that, I got the offer! It came as an email to schedule a call to 'share an update'. We scheduled it for the next day and I got the offer via call.

The interview started with a recruiter chat where they gave me info about the role and scheduled the next interview. Then, I had a 2-hour video call on Teams with three developers from different teams. The first hour was behavioral questions, and the second hour was a live coding exam done on my own computer using my preferred IDE, where I had to share my screen. They emailed me the questions as JSON files. I messed up by not checking the email first and thought they'd say the questions verbally, which led to me misunderstanding the task. They didn't correct me, maybe because they didn't realize I hadn't seen the email. My advice is to wait for the email, review the questions and data, and then start sharing your screen. I also found it a bit of a hassle to set up my IDE and get it to work with the JSON, wishing it was more like LeetCode. The questions themselves weren't overly complex.

So, the placement drive for Principal Global Services happened on our campus back in mid-August. First up was Round 1, which was an Online Assessment through HirePro. This round had an Aptitude Test covering Quantitative, Logical Reasoning, and Verbal Ability. After the aptitude part, there was a Coding Section. This section had 2 medium-level questions, and they were about Arrays and Strings. The difficulty was pretty moderate, and managing your time during this was pretty crucial. I felt like the aptitude questions were mostly standard placement-style ones. For the coding part, you really needed to know how to solve problems and think about edge cases. All in all, it was a manageable test if you practiced arrays, strings, and basic DSA consistently. My advice for preparing is to practice coding questions from arrays, strings, and basic data structures on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank. Also, give your aptitude skills a refresh using standard placement prep materials. Just remember, time management is super important during the online test.