SEP Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

This was a casual chat with someone from the software engineering team. We talked for about 45 minutes. They asked me some questions and I got to ask them questions too. The interviewer was really helpful when I asked things.

The interview day was from around 9 am to 3 pm and included an office tour, some whiteboard coding problems, lunch with team members, and a final segment where I had to teach them something or present a project/code. The interviewers seemed disengaged, with one even dozing off and snoring during my presentation. Another was on their phone. I felt I had to lead the conversation and ask them questions because they barely asked about my background or skills. It was an uncomfortable experience, feeling like they were just going through the motions without genuine interest in assessing me.

The day will start with a tour of the office for about 45-60 minutes. Then, we'll move on to a couple of coding exercises. The first whiteboard exercise will take 30-45 minutes, and the second one will be 15-45 minutes initially. We'll break for lunch for 60-90 minutes. After lunch, you can chat with someone from the SEP team who isn't part of your interview group for 15-45 minutes, if you'd like. We might need up to 90 minutes to wrap up the second whiteboard problem. Finally, there's a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' session for 20-30 minutes. You'll need to be ready to talk for 10-15 minutes about one of these topics: something you're an expert in (like technology, architecture, or patterns), some of your own code (personal projects, open source contributions, nothing under NDA), or your typical team workflow and how project constraints might affect it. This part is designed to be on a topic you're already familiar with, so minimal prep is needed. Your audience for this will be 2-3 people.