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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

Connect Four is a game where two players take turns dropping their color discs into a vertically suspended grid. The game ends when a player adds a disc to the playing grid that connects four discs of their color. The connected discs can be in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line. Write a function to be called after every turn that returns true if the game is over (and false otherwise).
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Software Development Engineer Intern

Interviewed at Microsoft

4★
Mar 19, 2009

Connect Four is a game where two players take turns dropping their color discs into a vertically suspended grid. The game ends when a player adds a disc to the playing grid that connects four discs of their color. The connected discs can be in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line. Write a function to be called after every turn that returns true if the game is over (and false otherwise).

However the interview was about Senior Java Position, I just asked a couple of questions about Java and nothing about Javascript. The interview questions were about: 1. Data structure and algorithms (30 minutes) 2. Operating Systems Concepts (System calls, concurrency, etc, Device Drivers.) 3. TCP/IP Layered protocol ( I was really really good at this when I was in college :) ) Till now about 1 hour or more passed from the 90 minutes interview... 4. Couple of questions about REST, Java Concurrency and Testing I could understand the emphasis on the OS, algorithms design and analysis is to be asked at Google & Amazon-like companies or to be asked to a fresh engineer he is just graduated from the university with a fresh knowledge. I am not denying their questions about OS, Data structure, and algorithms, but to make most on the interview for such topics and eventually got rejected because my knowledge in JavaScript is not enough is not honesty in reporting the Interview status. I answered the algorithms question and OS, TCP/IP from memory (which mostly wasn't that accurate as I left university more than 10 years back).
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Senior Software Engineer

Interviewed at ING

4.1★
Jan 23, 2018

However the interview was about Senior Java Position, I just asked a couple of questions about Java and nothing about Javascript. The interview questions were about: 1. Data structure and algorithms (30 minutes) 2. Operating Systems Concepts (System calls, concurrency, etc, Device Drivers.) 3. TCP/IP Layered protocol ( I was really really good at this when I was in college :) ) Till now about 1 hour or more passed from the 90 minutes interview... 4. Couple of questions about REST, Java Concurrency and Testing I could understand the emphasis on the OS, algorithms design and analysis is to be asked at Google & Amazon-like companies or to be asked to a fresh engineer he is just graduated from the university with a fresh knowledge. I am not denying their questions about OS, Data structure, and algorithms, but to make most on the interview for such topics and eventually got rejected because my knowledge in JavaScript is not enough is not honesty in reporting the Interview status. I answered the algorithms question and OS, TCP/IP from memory (which mostly wasn't that accurate as I left university more than 10 years back).

Given a database, where we know some portion of data (e.g. say 20%) is accessed more than the other portion of the database by the client. We have a frontend that client requests data from. Design a data structure that will increase the efficiency of access of objects. And we know that we can only hold on to n elements in memory.
avatar

Software Development Engineer

Interviewed at Microsoft

4★
Aug 2, 2014

Given a database, where we know some portion of data (e.g. say 20%) is accessed more than the other portion of the database by the client. We have a frontend that client requests data from. Design a data structure that will increase the efficiency of access of objects. And we know that we can only hold on to n elements in memory.

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