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Software Engineer Interview Questions

Software engineers write programs to design and develop computer software. Interviews are highly technical, so come ready to work through coding problems and math brainteasers. The specific questions you are asked will depend on what type of programming position you are looking for. Try researching a specific software discipline such as web development, application development, or system development.

Top Software Engineer Interview Questions & How to Answer

Question 1

Question #1: How would you describe your programming task process?

How to answer
How to answer: When answering a question about your process or life cycle for software development and engineering, it's helpful to consider every step, beginning with obtaining the requirements for the end product. Include as much detail as possible to help the interviewer learn more about any work you've done as a software engineer and how you handle a task to show your ability to tackle a project from start to finish.
Question 2

Question #2: Which programming languages do you know and prefer?

How to answer
How to answer: An interviewer will want to know what programming languages you're familiar with, as well as which languages you prefer. This question doesn't necessarily have a right or wrong answer, but it does provide insights into your capabilities and coding expertise. If the job listing for which you are interviewing includes specific language knowledge preferences, make sure to include them when outlining the software languages you know.
Question 3

Question 3: What is an example of a successful project that you completed?

How to answer
How to answer: When describing your success with a past project, it's helpful to identify aspects of the project that went well and detail the different task list elements. You can describe the team with whom you worked on the project, how you managed your time, and how you specifically contributed to the project.

419,369 software engineer interview questions shared by candidates

1) I have class hierarchy and should create array of different instances of this hierarchy. They asked me to write a function which iterates this array and executes different methods according to the instance class. I suggested that downcasting is a bad idea and that it can violate Liskov substitution rule of the SOLID principles, and this problem should be solved using collections and generics, but they did not accept this answer 2) Create Queue N size using only N size array. 3) some Java concurrency related questions: synchronized volatile, atomic, etc....
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Senior Software Engineer

Interviewed at Taboola

4.2★
Dec 6, 2015

1) I have class hierarchy and should create array of different instances of this hierarchy. They asked me to write a function which iterates this array and executes different methods according to the instance class. I suggested that downcasting is a bad idea and that it can violate Liskov substitution rule of the SOLID principles, and this problem should be solved using collections and generics, but they did not accept this answer 2) Create Queue N size using only N size array. 3) some Java concurrency related questions: synchronized volatile, atomic, etc....

Java program in round 3 was the most difficult question in my case. A matrix halfly-filled with numbers - almost randomly was given . And You need to fill the blank matrix of same size with those numbers in similar arrangement in a program using 2D arrays and loops.
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Trainee Software Engineer

Interviewed at Zycus

3.5★
Jan 10, 2014

Java program in round 3 was the most difficult question in my case. A matrix halfly-filled with numbers - almost randomly was given . And You need to fill the blank matrix of same size with those numbers in similar arrangement in a program using 2D arrays and loops.

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