Zenefits Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 83 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Zenefits.
Zenefits
Software Engineer
Entry Average Negative experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical
I applied and a recruiter reached out to schedule an interview, which was great. The interview itself was supposed to be an hour, but the interviewer seemed rushed and uninterested from the start. Despite my attempts to keep the conversation going, he gave very short, unengaging replies. He asked a general question about my resume and then cut the interview short by about 45 minutes, not asking any follow-up questions about my experience. He also gave very brief, unhelpful answers when I asked about the company. It felt like he was just going through the motions, and ending the interview so abruptly was unprofessional, especially since we barely spoke. I left without knowing the next steps.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Let's discuss your resume.
Zenefits
Software Engineer
Senior Easy Negative experience Decline offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Phone screen Technical screen Onsite Offer
Interview formats
Coding System Design Behavioral
The interview process started with a phone screen, then an onsite interview. The onsite included two coding rounds (one focusing more on algorithms, the other on object-oriented programming and problem-solving), two systems design rounds, and one behavioral round. I found it pretty easy, honestly, the engineering talent here doesn't seem very strong. The company felt a bit sketchy though; they told me they wanted to offer me the job and pushed hard for my salary expectations. I gave them a number that was reasonable and in line with other offers I had. The recruiter said they'd check with the HR manager, and then they pulled the offer, claiming I wasn't senior enough and was actually being considered for a junior role, despite my 5+ years of experience. Maybe I look young for my age, but it seems weird how their managers know what employees make, which I'm not used to. It feels like a big conflict of interest.
Confirmed questions6 questions
- Are anagrams still anagrams after deleting one character?
- How would you design a calculator that handles +, -, (,), and *?
- Let's talk about the system design for eBay, focusing on the bidding part.
Zenefits
Software Engineer
Mid Difficult Positive experience No offer 8 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Onsite Onsite Onsite Onsite
Interview formats
Coding Coding Coding Coding System Design Coding
I applied online on the career page and the HR called me within 2 days. There were four coding rounds which followed by a meeting in Bangalore office. All were done from the USA office in late nights. This was followed by another 2 rounds in Bangalore office. one round was on design problem and other three were on coding for problems on org chart etc..I think they put lot of importance on solving the problem and optimization. I was asked to find errors and bugs in my code and fix them
Confirmed questions3 questions
- Design problem and was asked to write code
- write code for problems on org chart etc.
- find errors and bugs in my code and fix them
Zenefits Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Zenefits interview reports.
“Given a 2D array representing building heights, calculate the amount of water that can be trapped between them. For instance, with [4,0,4], the trapped water is 4 units.”
Read reports →“What is the possible number of paths in a matrix containing 1's and 0's?”
Read reports →“What is the expected average outcome when a fair die is rolled one million times?”
Read reports →“Write code to determine if there are two nodes in a Binary Search Tree of integers whose values sum up to a given integer k.”
Read reports →“Can you find the length of the longest palindrome that can be formed from a given input string (char array), allowing characters to be non-contiguous?”
Read report →“Does a loop nested inside another loop invariably lead to a quadratic time complexity?”
Read report →“What is the total number of nodes in a complete binary tree, and how do you handle cases where the tree is not complete by returning -1?”
Read report →“Considering a grid (e.g., [ [1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6] ]), can you determine if a given path (e.g., [3, 6, 5]) is possible to traverse? Movement is restricted to up, down, left, and right, with no diagonal steps.”
Read report →“Given objects with an isSame(obj a, obj b) function that checks for equality (a == b), and an array of these objects, find the object that appears more than 50% of the time. Return NULL if no such object exists.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 83 Zenefits interview reports.