Zymergen Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

Applied online. A recruiter got in touch and set up an initial recruiter phone screen. It was pretty standard, covering my background to see if it fit the role. Then there was a Hiring Manager phone screen which went well, followed by a Technical phone screen. The question was good and it went well. After that, I was invited onsite for 6 rounds, including presentation, technical, and behavioral interviews. I was really impressed with the process overall – the recruiters and schedulers were timely and the whole thing was super organized. The interviewers were also really welcoming, which is something I care a lot about.

It was a 3 part interview. First, a quick call with some easy questions. Then, a second call where they asked harder questions and had me do a coding exercise. The last part was an on-site interview. This included coding, system design, and questions about working with other teams. They also wanted me to give a talk about a project I worked on recently. It was a pretty cool interview process. The technical questions were reasonable, not obscure or super tricky. They asked a lot about communicating with biologists, software design, and testing. It feels like they really care about design and communication skills. Most of the interviews were with software engineers and managers, but I did talk to someone from the biology side to see if I could explain my work to someone who isn't an engineer, which seems pretty important there.

I applied online and a recruiter got in touch within a couple of weeks. The hiring process seemed to take a while, longer than other companies, and went on for weeks. I had other offers on the table and was in the final stages of other interviews. I couldn't wait for their process to finish because I had to make a decision on other offers, so I stopped pursuing this one.