TaxJar Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

Recruiter reached out on LinedIn. Had the initial call. Then the initial technical exercise. The exercise is pretty simple if you worked with ruby enough. They give you some broken code and a couple unit tests and you're supposed to fix the code using unit tests as your guide. Then came the interview with the hiring manager with more or less standard questions. I felt it went fairly well, but I'm a bit on a spectrum - wouldn't be the first time I misread the situation. Waited for 5 days after the conversation with the manager, then followed up with the recruiter. Still didn't get any response. Waited for another 5 days, followed up with someone else on the team and got a typical response from the recruiter that they decided not to go with my candidacy. 10 days to follow up is a bit long, but it's also December, totally understandable with a lot of people being out of the office. I really liked the company from what I could gather about them. Wish they provided some feedback as to what was lacking in the interview.

After applying, I had to answer some written questions. Then, a recruiter called me, which was a nice chat. After that, I moved on to a live coding session with someone who seemed to be the head of the reporting team. They sent me instructions an hour before the call on how to get API keys for an API I'd be using. This involved signing up on a website, confirming my email, getting the keys, and quickly looking over some documentation. During the call, after some light chat, we got to the coding part. I was asked to review some code. It was a bit messy in terms of formatting, and I started to clean it up as I read it, but the interviewer wasn't happy with that, so I stopped and just gave my feedback without much reformatting. Then came a strange question: "Do you think it will run?" I thought I could just run it to check, but he moved on. The next task was to run a method and verify a specific value in the payload. I ran into an exception, fixed a bad require call, and then got a 401 error. While debugging and explaining my thought process, I identified a potential issue in the authentication code. I wanted to make a quick change and test, but the interviewer seemed impatient and kept asking questions that complicated things. We eventually got to the part I'd spotted, fixed it, but the mood was already off. I then wanted to check the payload structure, but the interviewer questioned why I was doing that, suggesting it could all be done in Rspec. This annoyed me, but I followed his lead and started working on an Rspec file. I had to copy syntax from a past project because I couldn't recall it, especially while frustrated. The interviewer's note-taking, which involved a lot of typing, intensified when I opened the old file. I tried to write the spec as he preferred, and he apologized for being harsh, sensing I was off my game. Despite my irritation, he kept offering 'helpful' suggestions. He then asked if I knew about debuggers like pry, which felt like a test of my competence. I kept my composure and finished the spec, encountering a few more errors before the end. When time was almost up, he abruptly asked if I had any questions.

The interview process started with a few phone screens, then an hour-long technical code challenge with a Senior engineer, and finally an hour-ish video call with the CTO. I didn't get an offer, but it was a positive experience and TaxJar seems like a cool place to work with smart, positive people. The process was fast with good communication.