Toptal Backend Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So I signed up on their website and they emailed me to set up a phone interview even before I uploaded my resume. They wanted me to fill out the profile, add the interviewer's skype, and schedule the first interview stage on their portal. The first interview was just asking what I'm best at, and then they told me about the rest of the process. It's like a 3-part test on Codility, then a review with a senior person, and finally a project that they said would take a few hours. The interviewer suggested practicing for the online test because the questions aren't like real development stuff. They said I could email or skype them anytime if I had questions. I did the online test, and it's been over a week with no response from Toptal.

It was a 4 stage process. Started with a video presentation of myself, then an algorithms interview with 2 not too difficult tasks. After that was a homework assignment which was pretty big and took about 8-9 hours to complete. The last stage was an interview with a senior dev where we discussed the homework. They ran tests on it, asked me to explain my solution and fix bugs. I got a negative experience in the end because they declined me for a couple of minor bugs. I'm totally sure these guys have these bugs too. I don't get the problem with a small bug if I covered all other cases with tests, they work fine, and I could fix it right there and then? It was a waste of a significant amount of time. Super weird politics with no bug tolerance.

The interview process had 3 main steps. First, a simple chat like self-introduction and general stuff. Second, a problem-solving session with 3 easy tasks and plenty of time to solve them. Third, a live coding round with one easy and one medium question, 30 minutes total (15 mins each). Fourth, a take-home project which was easy, taking about 5-10 hours for a mid/senior person. Finally, an explanation of the project, which was also easy; showing my tests was sufficient.