The Washington Post Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 21 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at The Washington Post.
The Washington Post
Software Engineer
Entry Average Negative experience No offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Take home Onsite
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral
Interviewed a year ago for a Junior Software Engineer role. The process dragged on for 2 months and included meeting several people, a coding challenge, and ultimately they chose an internal candidate after the final round. The recruiter was really unprofessional, never providing updates unless I pushed them with multiple emails. It's a shame to invest so much time in a process, have great interactions with the hiring teams, only to have it end this way. I wouldn't recommend this experience, it felt totally misaligned with the company's public image and stated values. Just wanted to share so others don't stress too much about this process – the recruiter likely won't treat you with respect.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- What are your current projects?
- Coding challenge
- How is your teamwork?
The Washington Post
Software Engineer
Entry Easy Positive experience Decline offer 1 round
Interview process
Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding Behavioral
So the interview was about an hour long and it included four technical questions, plus some behavioral ones too. The technical questions were pretty standard, like Leetcode easy to medium stuff. They also asked some extra technical questions that were more about my resume and how I'd fit with the team.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Could you solve the Two Sum problem from Leetcode?
- Here are some other standard Leetcode questions, easy to medium difficulty.
- We have some technical questions for you based on your resume.
The Washington Post
Software Engineer
Intern Easy Neutral experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Technical Behavioral
I had a phone screen with the recruiter, and then there was a technical and behavioral interview. They asked typical STAR questions and also asked about my resume projects and programming language knowledge. The interviewers were really nice and approachable.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Can you describe a situation where you disagreed with someone more senior than you?
- Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a higher-up
- What projects have you worked on that are listed on your resume?
The Washington Post Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from The Washington Post interview reports.
“Create a class that assigns unique identifiers to DOM nodes.”
Read reports →“Given different pricing structures, render a list of product offerings.”
Read reports →“How would you count the occurrences of numbers within a list?”
Read reports →“What design patterns does the Java ORM Hibernate utilize?”
Read reports →“When you have aggregated all member data in a dataset, how can you stop a member with a large number of records from disproportionately influencing a clustering algorithm, versus members with fewer records?”
Read report →“Could you solve the Two Sum problem from Leetcode?”
Read report →“Can you explain concepts like null vs undefined, promises, async await, try catch finally, MVC, recursion, polymorphism, and the static and final keywords in Java, as well as the differences between SQL and NoSQL databases?”
Read report →“What makes you want to join The Post?”
Read report →“How would you describe your understanding of JavaScript best practices?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 21 The Washington Post interview reports.