StarLeaf Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

Had an initial get-to-know-you chat with a small technical challenge. It was a friendly and relaxed process. I was invited to the next round, which was three 1-hour interviews back-to-back. This followed a discussion about what I was looking for and whether there were roles that might be a good fit. On the interview day, it felt strange because I was being interviewed for the opposite of what I wanted and explicitly stated I was not looking for. After over 2.5 hours, I was told to wait for my last interviewer, only for the previous one to log back in and tell me that the roles I was interested in were filled and that he didn't know about other possibilities. I understand not passing technical interviews, but I don't understand being interviewed for a role that is clearly not what I'm looking for, especially after explicitly stating my disinterest.

I applied via a recruiter in late Spring/early Summer 2020. The first round was with a junior SWE (2-3 years experience), who asked about my past projects and an algorithm design question. The programming language didn't matter. The difficulty was between easy and medium on Hacker Rank, leaning towards easy. It lasted about 1 to 1.5 hours and was very pleasant. The second and final stage was with senior engineers. It felt like 3 interviews in one, with the last one potentially being with the CEO/founder. The first part was system design, the second was a discussion about past projects, future interests, and general background. The third part was similar, and the CEO/founder asked insightful questions about my past projects. I wasn't as happy with this stage, which lasted about 4 hours, and it was unclear if there were breaks. My overall impression is they were looking for someone with more experience than I had. For context, if you have one good internship, a decent 2:1 degree, and either an interesting programming-focused thesis or another good internship, you should be okay.

I applied online and got an email to do a coding test where I had to write a LZW decompressor. I thought this coding test was great because it was a real application. It wasn't easy but I enjoyed doing it. A few days after sending my solution, I had a technical interview with an engineer over Starleaf. The last step was supposed to be an onsite interview, but they offered to do another video interview since I was abroad. I didn't end up going to the last interview because I had already accepted another offer, but I would recommend interviewing at StarLeaf.