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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.

418,794 software engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Given a string write a function which prints all the subsets of the string. Now make the function to return only unique solutions. For example if they give you "abc" you print out a ab abc ac b bc c Now for the unique solution constraint, if they give you "aba" the output should be: a ab aba b
avatar

Software Engineer Intern

Interviewed at Meta

3.6★
Dec 13, 2013

Given a string write a function which prints all the subsets of the string. Now make the function to return only unique solutions. For example if they give you "abc" you print out a ab abc ac b bc c Now for the unique solution constraint, if they give you "aba" the output should be: a ab aba b

Question is verbose, uses search engine, string matching etc., but at the end boils down to this: There is two dimensional array where each sub array (row) is sorted, i.e. [[1 1000 2000] [20 10001 5000] [55 10002 222222]] Find a minimum range contain a number from each row. For above array it should be (1000-1002) range.
avatar

Software Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6★
Mar 8, 2014

Question is verbose, uses search engine, string matching etc., but at the end boils down to this: There is two dimensional array where each sub array (row) is sorted, i.e. [[1 1000 2000] [20 10001 5000] [55 10002 222222]] Find a minimum range contain a number from each row. For above array it should be (1000-1002) range.

Given an array of strings with commit ids, and a predicate isBuggy that returns if a single commit is buggy, write a program that finds the first buggy commit. - When a commit is buggy, we assume that all its children are buggy. - When a commit is not buggy, we assume that all its ancestors are not buggy. After solving it, I had to describe its time complexity and spatial complexity and how would I choose the test cases.
avatar

Software Engineer

Interviewed at Yelp

3.2★
May 14, 2015

Given an array of strings with commit ids, and a predicate isBuggy that returns if a single commit is buggy, write a program that finds the first buggy commit. - When a commit is buggy, we assume that all its children are buggy. - When a commit is not buggy, we assume that all its ancestors are not buggy. After solving it, I had to describe its time complexity and spatial complexity and how would I choose the test cases.

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