How to Interview for a Software Engineering Position

If you are an engineer applying for a job, the questions posed during an interview may vary based on whether you are applying for a position as an electrical, mechanical, computer, civil, or other type of engineer.

However, almost any engineer job interview will include questions that assess your technological knowledge, your engineering skills, and your ability to communicate with team members and clients.

As in any interview, it’s a good idea to review questions, and practice your response, in advance of the interview.

Being prepared will help you feel confident, and ensure you’re hitting the right notes in your answers.

Engineering Interview Questions

The following is a list of frequently asked engineering interview questions. Several of these general engineer interview questions are behavioral questions, that ask you how you have acted during a given situation in the past.

Structure your responses by using the STAR interview response technique to describe a past situation, the task or challenge involved, the action you took, and the result of your action.

• Tell me about the most challenging engineering project that you have been involved with during the past year.
• Describe the most challenging written technical report or presentation that you’ve had to complete.
• Describe an experience with a difficult client. How did you handle the situation? What would you have done differently?
• Tell me about your greatest success in using logic to solve an engineering problem.
• Give me an example of a time when you applied your ability to use analytical techniques to define problems or design solutions.
• What checks and balances do you use to make sure that you don’t make mistakes?
• Do you have any patents? If so, tell me about them. If not, is that something you see yourself pursuing in the future? Why or why not?
• What engineering skills have you developed or improved upon during the past year?
• Which software packages are you familiar with? What is the most interesting thing you know how to do with one of these packages?
• What are you doing to stay current with the latest technology?

Civil Engineer Interview Questions

Civil engineering firms that are hiring new colleagues will often seek to gauge how seamlessly promising candidates would adapt to their company culture. Since hiring initiatives can be time-intensive and expensive, they also prefer to hire associates that they can trust will stick around for a while. Prepare for these questions by researching the firm ahead of time.

• What appeals to you about working for our company?
• Why did you apply for this particular job?
• Why did you select civil engineering as your field or major?
• Describe a time when you questioned your choice of engineering as a career or major.
• Describe an occasion when you worked on a team and something did not go well. How did you respond?
• Share a situation when a project or proposal of yours met resistance or was not adopted in a timely fashion. How did you handle this dilemma?

Software Engineer Interview Questions

If you’re a software engineer, see these interview questions about the skills and attributes that qualify you the job.

Questions About Your Personal Attributes

Your interviewer will be interested not only in your training and professional experience, but also in your personal goals, self-knowledge, and the soft skills (“people skills”) that enable you to work well with clients and other team members.

• What strengths make you a good engineer?
• What was your professional development plan for the past two years?
• Describe a time when you received criticism from a supervisor or professor. How did you respond?
• Describe your ideal boss.
• What is an example of a problem where you had to think on your feet?
• What will be the biggest challenge for you with this position?

Questions About Your Resume / Career Trajectory

Be prepared to explain any “red flags” on your resume, such as significant employment gaps and brief position tenures. Your interviewer may also inquire about your plans for the future and about information you may not have included on your resume.

• Why are you currently unemployed?
• What have you accomplished outside of school and work that you are proud of?
• What are your salary expectations?
• Where would you like to be with your career five years from now?
• Describe something you omitted from your resume and how that would make you a good fit for the position.

Problem-Solving Questions

Problem-solving questions require you to “think on your feet,” just as you have to do daily in the workplace. Be ready to offer examples of a few of your most important engineering accomplishments that demanded deep analytical skills and a proactive trouble-shooting stance.

• Describe any situations where you took initiative or displayed an entrepreneurial approach.
• Give me an example of how you applied your problem-solving skills to a design challenge.
• Share an example of how you have applied your skills to on-site work.
• Describe your most successful engineering project. What enabled you to achieve this success?
• What about on-site work is most challenging for you?

Technical Questions

Don’t be surprised if you have to field a few questions that test your basic engineering knowledge and training background.

• What is the required information to repair a midbeam in a building?
• Describe any projects or coursework which equip you to work on design issues for water systems.
• How much oil is necessary to pollute the ocean?
• Do you have any security clearance to work on classified projects? If you have worked on a DOD project, describe a challenge which you encountered.
• What are the ways to filter the contaminants in drinking water?
• What are sources of contaminants in water?
• Describe the differences between Corsim and Vissim models.
• How have you best applied computer technology to your work during the past year?
• What software have you learned to use or mastered more fully during the past year?

General Job Interview Questions

In addition to job-specific interview questions, you will also be asked more general questions about your employment history, education, strengths, weaknesses, achievements, goals, and plans. Here’s a list of the most common interview questions to review, and examples of the best answers.

Key Takeaways

REVIEW COMMON ENGINEERING INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: Be prepared to answer both general queries about your education and professional background and questions specific to the job you are targeting.

RESEARCH THE EMPLOYER: Learn as much as you can about the engineering firm you are interviewing with so that you can prove how you would be the perfect fit for their department.

KNOW YOUR TRADE: Be ready to discuss the engineering design processes and technologies you use in your day-to-day work.

What is Software Engineering?

Software engineers job descriptions often heavily overlap with software developers, but they are different. The main difference is that software engineers apply engineering concepts and principles to software development. Engineers consider more than just the code they’re writing and consider the limitations of the environment that the program will reside.

What Does a Software Engineer Do?

Is Software Engineering Right for You?

• A logical mindset
• A love for troubleshooting and solving puzzles
• The ability to work well on a team
• A desire to continually learn
• A passion for technology

Software Engineer Job Outlook

Software engineers have a strong job outlook, as experts predict more software developers to be needed to respond to an increased demand for software. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of software engineers is projected to grow 21 percent by 2028, which is “much faster than average.”

How Much do Software Engineers Earn?

Software engineers earn high salaries. According to ZipRecruiter, most positions offer salaries between $79,000 and $115,000 per year; the national average salary for software engineers is almost $98,500 per year.

The exact amount you can expect to earn as a software engineer varies between companies and locations. Software engineers at company with large engineering needs such as Google or IBM can expect to command higher salaries than those who work at a start-up. In addition, the average software engineer in Atlanta, Georgia can expect to earn almost $99,000 per year, whereas the same developer would earn over $115,000 in San Francisco.

The amount you earn also depends on your experience. Senior software engineers, who have more experience than other engineers, can expect to earn a salary of almost $119,000, according to ZipRecruiter. Remember, this does not include employee perks or benefits, or stock options, so you should take that into account when evaluating a job offer.

Hi, I’m Brian, a former senior software engineer and now software engineering advisor at Pathrise. I work with hundreds of software engineers to help them land their dream job. Check out this article with questions to ask in your next software engineering job interview.

A lot of preparation goes into answering questions, both technical and behavioral, accurately in your software engineering job interviews. You practice on Leetcode and memorize your elevator pitch, all so that you can respond with confidence when you get into the room with the interviewer.

But what happens when you get towards the end of the interview and they ask if you have any questions for them. A lot of people freeze because they forget to plan for this section. This is a great opportunity squandered, because asking good questions can often give you the final push when it comes to interviewer feedback.

As a senior software engineer and now advisor, I’ve interviewed hundreds of candidates throughout my career. If they ask good questions, I would mark that in my notes and so would the rest of the interviewers. We would take these questions into account when determining if they would accept and remain interested in the role in the long term. These questions affect the decision to move forward and/or extend an offer.

So, we’ve come up with the 10 best questions for software engineers to ask in their interviews to ensure they show interest.

Questions to ask in a software engineering job interview

1. What are your current challenges on the team?
2. How can I, in the role that I’m interviewing for, best contribute to solving these challenges?
3. What opportunities will I have to learn new languages or technologies, related to the work that you are doing here?
4. Is the engineering department more team-based or autonomous?
5. How much guidance can I expect from my supervisor and how much ownership can I expect for my projects?
6. What are your favorite aspects of working at [company]?
7. What is the most difficult part of your day at [company]?
8. How can my work directly affect the company’s mission of [company mission]?
9. I read that [recent update about company]. How does that affect [the mission, the work of the engineering team, etc]?
10. If I were to start on the engineering team tomorrow, what would my first task be?

Coming in with prepared questions will lessen your stress when you get to the end of the interview and ensure that you leave the interviewer with a positive impression of your interest in the company and role. Questions that show your willingness to learn, drive to work hard, and excitement about the company and mission are all really helpful for the interviewers to gauge your fit as part of the culture.

Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with students and young professionals 1-on-1 so they can land their dream job in tech. With these tips and guidance, we’ve seen interview performance scores double for fellows in the program.

If you want to work with any of our advisors 1-on-1 to get help with your software engineer interviews or with any other aspect of the job search, become a Pathrise fellow.

How a Software Engineer Should Answer the “Tell Me About Yourself” Interview Question

I think that without a doubt the most common interview question is “so, tell me about yourself”.

As someone who’s gone through the HackReactor program, spoken to recruiters, and interviewed dozens of candidates myself, here are the most important things any candidate should keep top of mind.

Common Misconceptions

There are two common misconceptions with this question. The first misconception is that it’s not really an ‘interview question’, rather just an opportunity to make small talk with the interviewer to show them that you can build rapport. The second misconception is that this is your chance to show the interviewer that there is more to you than just being a programmer. Indeed, if someone asks you in a social setting “tell me about yourself” your answer probably should include more than just what your favorite frontend frameworks and sorting algorithms are, but in an interview you should focus on your technical strengths.

Many years ago I used to think this was a silly question interviewers would ask when they weren’t prepared to actually give an interview, and I would even get slightly offended. I would wonder “well doesn’t this interviewer have my resume? Have they even looked at it? There is so much from both my career and who I am as a person that has brought me here to this position… where do I even start?” But in reality, this is what makes this question both interesting and useful for the interviewer. Out of everything from the candidates’ past, what are they going to choose to describe themselves in 30 seconds?

Your answer should instill confidence about your chosen job and skills

The last thing you want after your answer is to leave your interviewer with doubts about the fact that you enjoy programming, and that it’s what you will continue to build your career in. In the past when I had the opportunity to conduct an interview, it was somewhat of a negative if the interviewee seemed eager to be in a leadership or more product facing role in the near future. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to be in a leadership role, but it would make me second guess their true intentions and whether programming was something that they enjoyed and were invested in.

When answering, I like to immediately jump into my current strengths, and my top choices for programming languages and frameworks. I can work backwards by talking about my current job, previous roles and framing every role as a building block that has brought me to where I am today with expertise in those particular languages/frameworks I originally centered my answer around.

If you have previous professional experience that isn’t related to programming , there may still be value in mentioning them if you’re able to tie it back to how it makes you an even better programmer today. Here are some ways you can tie back other skills to your role as a programmer:

• Designer: Strong understanding of UX and ability to craft beautiful UIs
• Engineer (non-software): Process, logic, and problem solving ability
• Product Manager: Organizing build process, getting user feedback, and connecting the pieces
• Manager: Leadership for future lead engineer roles
• Sales/Real Estate/Recruiter/HR: Can relate to the user and can work collaboratively as part of a team
• Musician/Chef: Grasp it as a science as much as an art
• Writer: Writing programming blog posts and tutorials

If you are looking for your first professional software engineer role and you find that you are either having trouble filling the 30 seconds, or it is dominated by your previous non-programming related experience, you can fill in more space by mentioning a showcase project you have been working on.

Another advantage to incorporating a project into your “tell me about yourself” response, is that it can easily segway into the intuitive follow up of: tell me more about that project. It positions you to showcase a project that you’ve prepared yourself to talk about and once again show your excitement for future technologies you want to learn and general areas that you want to grow in. During the interview, it’s valuable to to demonstrate your willingness to adapt to the ever-evolving nature of programming. This portion of the answer will be even stronger if you can tie in your excitement to learn a technology that the company currently uses. It will show that you’ve done your homework, and that you’re confident that even if you haven’t worked with a particular technology in the past, you can pick it up quickly.

Once you have given a solid overview of your technical ability and interests, I do think it’s nice to have a couple sentences on other interests/hobbies. There is a chance that the interviewer may have a common interest, whether a sports team, or travel destination. Having the ability to build rapport with an interviewer is always a plus and allows them to see if you’re someone they would enjoy working alongside.

Several young Google software engineers provided some great tips that will prepare you to get hired by Google. A key common denominator is to really know your stuff well because the main focus of the interview is going to be on technical skills.

Google Software Engineers Oliver King, Tremayne Stewart, and Vivian Li offered their own experiences and tips for how to do well in an interview for a software engineering job at Google:

What Are Coding Interviews Like?

Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

Really the big focus of this interview is going to be technical skills. Most interviewers are going to run a few warm-up questions, and then one main question that’s going to take the bulk of the time. So you can imagine a 30 to 35-minute interactive question.

Tremayne Stewart, Google Software Engineer

The questions themselves aren’t going to have the answer presented to you directly. You really have to understand what the question is asking and have an understanding of different data structures and algorithms to be like, okay, I can mix and match this together a little bit to make this happen. Then you can build on top of anything you have to do inside the actual interview.

Vivian Li, Google Software Engineer

From my experience, all the interviewers from Google are extremely nice, so they are very supportive and helpful. Even though the first solution you come up with might not be the best, they will guide you through and give you enough hints, so eventually, you can get the best solution.

What’s Your Best Advice to Solve Coding Questions?

Vivian Li, Google Software Engineer

You definitely need to think out loud. First, ask clarification questions. Second, call out assumptions. Third, you need to explain your thoughts clearly before jumping into coding.

Tremayne Stewart, Google Software Engineer

It’s like: What are your Edge cases? Define those first. Is anything going to be null? What kind of inputs are you getting? So you can make sure that you know, your system won’t break halfway through. Definitely speak out loud so that your interviewer knows where your mind is on certain things. That’s when they can give you hints every now and again. Like, “Oh, maybe don’t use a HashSet; a HashMap might be a little better.”

Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

I think a lot of people come into it with the misconception that for every problem you’re given, you must find the algorithmically optimal solution. But it’s better to find some solution than none at all. That’s really easy to mess up.

What Are Your Tips to Prepare for an Interview?

Tremayne Stewart, Google Software Engineer

The biggest piece of advice on how to do well at a software engineering interview is to not try to do well at the interview, but to do well as a software engineer in general. That comes with practice, and it comes with knowing your code. So you really have to do what you have to do to make sure that when you do get on site, you crush it.

Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

I’d recommend the Google Tech Dev Guide to make sure that your fundamentals are going to be strong for the interview. Make sure that you’re really good with at least one language because you’re only going to get to pick one when you do the interview.

Vivian Li, Google Software Engineer

Prepare yourself. Get used to coding on a whiteboard. The difference between coding on a whiteboard and coding in an editor is that you don’t have any helpful tools to guide you through to finish the syntax.

Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

So it’s easy to just practice writing some code on a piece of paper where you don’t have that type of tool.

Any Last Advice?

Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

I think there’s a misconception that you need to be the best engineer ever to work at Google. You don’t need to be an expert at algorithms, you just need to be good at them. You don’t need to know some really high-level complex data structures; you just need to know all the basic ones really well.

Tremayne Stewart, Google Software Engineer

You kind of think of Google as this super software-engineer-producing entity. But then you realize it’s people that have also been through your same process. They practiced, they worked, they developed to be who they are today.

Vivian Li, Google Software Engineer

Of course, Google likes to hire smart people, but don’t underestimate yourself — you can do it.

How a Software Engineer Should Answer the “Tell Me About Yourself” Interview Question

I think that without a doubt the most common interview question is “so, tell me about yourself”.

As someone who’s gone through the HackReactor program, spoken to recruiters, and interviewed dozens of candidates myself, here are the most important things any candidate should keep top of mind.

Common Misconceptions

There are two common misconceptions with this question. The first misconception is that it’s not really an ‘interview question’, rather just an opportunity to make small talk with the interviewer to show them that you can build rapport. The second misconception is that this is your chance to show the interviewer that there is more to you than just being a programmer. Indeed, if someone asks you in a social setting “tell me about yourself” your answer probably should include more than just what your favorite frontend frameworks and sorting algorithms are, but in an interview you should focus on your technical strengths.

Many years ago I used to think this was a silly question interviewers would ask when they weren’t prepared to actually give an interview, and I would even get slightly offended. I would wonder “well doesn’t this interviewer have my resume? Have they even looked at it? There is so much from both my career and who I am as a person that has brought me here to this position… where do I even start?” But in reality, this is what makes this question both interesting and useful for the interviewer. Out of everything from the candidates’ past, what are they going to choose to describe themselves in 30 seconds?

Your answer should instill confidence about your chosen job and skills

The last thing you want after your answer is to leave your interviewer with doubts about the fact that you enjoy programming, and that it’s what you will continue to build your career in. In the past when I had the opportunity to conduct an interview, it was somewhat of a negative if the interviewee seemed eager to be in a leadership or more product facing role in the near future. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to be in a leadership role, but it would make me second guess their true intentions and whether programming was something that they enjoyed and were invested in.

When answering, I like to immediately jump into my current strengths, and my top choices for programming languages and frameworks. I can work backwards by talking about my current job, previous roles and framing every role as a building block that has brought me to where I am today with expertise in those particular languages/frameworks I originally centered my answer around.

If you have previous professional experience that isn’t related to programming , there may still be value in mentioning them if you’re able to tie it back to how it makes you an even better programmer today. Here are some ways you can tie back other skills to your role as a programmer:

• Designer: Strong understanding of UX and ability to craft beautiful UIs
• Engineer (non-software): Process, logic, and problem solving ability
• Product Manager: Organizing build process, getting user feedback, and connecting the pieces
• Manager: Leadership for future lead engineer roles
• Sales/Real Estate/Recruiter/HR: Can relate to the user and can work collaboratively as part of a team
• Musician/Chef: Grasp it as a science as much as an art
• Writer: Writing programming blog posts and tutorials

If you are looking for your first professional software engineer role and you find that you are either having trouble filling the 30 seconds, or it is dominated by your previous non-programming related experience, you can fill in more space by mentioning a showcase project you have been working on.

Another advantage to incorporating a project into your “tell me about yourself” response, is that it can easily segway into the intuitive follow up of: tell me more about that project. It positions you to showcase a project that you’ve prepared yourself to talk about and once again show your excitement for future technologies you want to learn and general areas that you want to grow in. During the interview, it’s valuable to to demonstrate your willingness to adapt to the ever-evolving nature of programming. This portion of the answer will be even stronger if you can tie in your excitement to learn a technology that the company currently uses. It will show that you’ve done your homework, and that you’re confident that even if you haven’t worked with a particular technology in the past, you can pick it up quickly.

Once you have given a solid overview of your technical ability and interests, I do think it’s nice to have a couple sentences on other interests/hobbies. There is a chance that the interviewer may have a common interest, whether a sports team, or travel destination. Having the ability to build rapport with an interviewer is always a plus and allows them to see if you’re someone they would enjoy working alongside.

People have always wondered of how to prepare and what to expect during interviews and more so interview questions for software engineer. Based on some experience, the interview process will occur in three major phases.

The main interview questions for software engineer is ordinarily directed by HR or a general staff individual channel through resumes. Amid this beginning contact, the interviewer is searching for essential information.

Questions will include:

How could you have been able to you find out about this position?

This is the place they figure out what vocation advertising procedure they are utilizing truly meets expectations, i.e., corporate site, companion, and so on.

It is safe to say that you are willing to move?

Albeit there was a starting push for remote worker enlists, it seems more occupations are being filled which require the new contract to answer to a physical office area. Such a great amount for current innovation. More occupations are being moved to lower overhead areas. They have to know before they waste further assets, in the event that you are not kidding about moving to the center of no place for this employment.

How soon would you be able to begin?

Be fair on this one. Try not to be excessively anxious, making it impossible to accept a vocation, when you need to take care of a considerable measure of potential issues in migrating. They will expect something in overabundance of two weeks. You will need to consider offering your home or escaping from a lease, moving your lifetime accumulation of whatever, informing your present business and finishing any errand you are as of now dealing with for them. I accept 4 weeks is a base reaction as a rule.

The second interview will be directed by somebody with a specialized foundation.

As of right now, you has communicated enthusiasm for a position and have demonstrated an ability to move to their office. Presently comes the part where they attempt to figure out whether you will be an advantage for them or a solid match for their group flow. Here are a few questions you are prone to listen:

What is your present place of employment title?

In spite of the fact that you may not as of now hold a software engineering occupation title, there is still any desire for finding a software engineering position. The interviewer is attempting to bode well from the abilities you put down on your resume versus what aptitudes are needed of your present place of employment position.

Do you have any involvement with group based workplaces?

You may think this is a straightforward sort of inquiry to be asked, nonetheless, numerous individuals don’t need to cooperate with different people to finish work assignments. Right now engineer, you will be obliged to interface with other colleagues, more often than not every day. Cooperation is not for everybody. In the event that you have the kind of identity that makes group based work or choices troublesome, you ought to be straightforward with yourself. Else, you may arrive a position you lament taking.

It is safe to say that you are willing to migrate?

Yes, this inquiry was asked in the first interview. The imminent company needs to know you expectation for inquisitive for this position. Organizations get a huge amount of uses from an assortment of sources with numerous individuals applying just to test the business sector. Once more, be fair about your readiness to migrate.

What sort of programming background do you have?

A few organizations may need a dialect particular candidate, others may not. Be fair about your capacities, highlight your properties and state your confinements.

The third period of the interview procedure will probably come as an aptitudes test.

This interview is introduced on the way that you have the essential foundation they look for, and your eagerness to work where the employment is. The test may arrive in an up close and personal format, or numerous organizations are utilizing a delegated test format.

For those new to an administered test format, basically it obliges that an impartial gathering is available to control the test and to check that time restrictions are met and no reference materials are utilized. The delegated test can be given at a nearby library or college. The imminent company will handle the logistics of this game plan and to see the test is conveyed and got.

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Interviewing for a Software Engineering position is unlike the interview process for most other professions. Some parts are similar, in that you will likely be questioned about your previous employment and education, and asked competency questions to test your situational judgement and experiences. However, the main attribute interviewers are looking for in the process is your programming ability. You will need to demonstrate that you can think quickly and solve technical or logical problems presented to you. This often involves talking through code on the phone or a video call, or writing up a solution on a whiteboard. You can usually code in any popular programming language such as Java or C++. In order to help you with your software engineering interview, we will be using the Python programming language, as it is easy to read, and has minimal syntax, making it ideal for interview situations.

During these technical stages of the software engineering interviews, it is almost guaranteed that you will be asked questions about data structures such as stacks, trees, and hash maps. You may also be asked about algorithms, which are often ideally solved by using a particular data structure. Here we will be looking at one such data structure – linked lists. What are they, why are they used, and how are they implemented?

So let’s start with the basics. What exactly is a linked list? A linked list is a chain of connected nodes, and nodes are objects consisting of a value and a pointer to another node. The diagram below helps visualise this concept.

Defining Classes

To implement a linked list, the first thing to do is to create a Node class, which will hold the data of the node and a pointer to the next node in the chain.

def __init__(self, data=None, next=None):

As the linked list itself is just a chain of nodes, to store the list we essentially just need a reference to the first node. Our LinkedList class is created below to store the head of the list.

Printing a Linked List

One of the most basic functions required of our linked list is the ability to print it. Printing the values of a linked list will be particularly useful when testing that other operations are performing as expected. An iterative method can be used to traverse through each node of the list and print out their values.

while node != None:

Inserting Nodes

Two further key functions are inserting and deleting a node to and from the linked list. Let’s start with inserting a node. A node could be inserted at the head of the list, at the tail of the list, or somewhere inbetween. The simplest of these options is at the head of the list.

def insert_at_head(self, data):

self.head = Node(data, self.head)

In this single line we create a new Node object with the data passed in, and it points to the current head node. Our new node is then assigned as the head of the linked list. So our list is now headed by the new node, which points to the old head, where the list continues as previous.

Inserting a node at the tail of the list requires a little more effort.

def insert_at_tail(self, data):

# if empty list, insert as head node

self.head = Node(data, None)

while current_node.next != None:

current_node.next = Node(data, None)

If the list is currently empty, then the tail and head are the same node, so we insert our one node as the head of the list. If the list is not empty, we iterate through the nodes until we reach the current tail. We then point this tail node to our new node, therefore appending it onto the end of the list.

We can also insert a node at a specific index (a numeric position in the list). To do this, we again first check for an empty list, in which case we insert as the head node. If the list is not empty, we want to iterate through the nodes in the list until we reach the desired index position. If we reach the end of the list before our index, then the position is out of range and no nodes are inserted. If we do reach the desired index in the linked list, we set the node at the penultimate index position to point to our new node, and set our new node to point to the previous node’s pointer.

This article provides frequently asked job interview questions for a software engineer position, with tips on how to answer.

General job description and responsibilities:

• Software engineers plan and develop new technologies; applications interfaces and software systems. They analyze and suggest modification of existing software after evaluating its performance.
• They design and/or upgrade application interfaces to improve performance.
• Software engineering professionals advise customers on software projects, functionality, technical application issues, new development, and software maintenance routine.

The common job titles for software engineering may be: Senior Software Engineer, Software Programmer, Software Developer, Software Designer, Application Developer, Application Engineer, Embedded Software Engineer, Web Developer, C++ Developer, Java Developer, Java Engineer, Quality Assurance Engineer, or QA Engineer. Software engineering consultants often specialize in more than one of these areas.

Software Engineer
Job Interview Questions and Answers

1. Describe the life-cycle of a software development (application design) process.
2. What software languages have you used to design, develop, and debug software application interfaces?
3. Explain the software analysis process, such as code analysis, code metrics, and system risk analysis or software reliability.
4. What type of software simulator and developer have you used?
5. If you’ve integrated new software in an existing system, tell us how you evaluated and identified the requirements for this new technology.
6. Have you designed UI, user interface?
7. Have you developed software testing procedures for new systems and performed QA, quality assurance, or audits?

► Answering the above questions:
Tell the interviewer what steps you take to analyze the user requirements; how you evaluate the software needs and assess its functionality. What are your principles and measurements for software modification? Describe how you research, develop, and write new software programs. How do you integrate old software platforms with new ones? Explain how you keep up to date with new technologies? What are your methods for investigating new technologies?

“Entry-Level Software Engineer” is a broad term. It’s often one used by larger employers to recruit computer science majors and other student seeking software development positions. During the interview process many of these employers will ask candidates to think about what specialization they’d like to focus on (e.g. front-end, back-end, etc.). These engineers spend most of their day writing code to make products and services function. The vast majority of employed entry-level software engineers work for large technology companies or startups.

Entry-Level Software Engineer Job Guide

Specialization under the software engineering is particularly common in an entry-level role. Most teams are composed of several specializations of engineers. Here are the most common types of software engineering roles:

1. Back-end engineers spend much of their time writing services, algorithms, and architecting the core bits and pieces of a system and the way it works.
2. Front-end engineers make the services that the back-end engineers are writing accessible to the end user through a UI. It’s not uncommon for front-end engineers to have some experience with UI design or partner often with a designer at the company.
3. Operations engineers are responsible for ensuring the infrastructure that supports a product or service is reliable and stays up and running. Another primary responsibility is ensuring a system’s scalability.
4. QA or test engineers are responsible for building systems that test the code that the other engineers are writing to ensure it’s stable and reliable.
5. Full-stack engineers do everything (back-end, front-end, operations, testing). These are less common as entry-level roles unless they work at a small startup.

Common Responsibilities of Entry-Level software engineers

The tasks that software engineers perform vary greatly depending on their specialization. Here are a few examples of what they do:

1. Building an RESTFUL API for consumption by another team at the company or a 3rd party. (Back-end)
2. Constructing an interface in HTML, CSS, and Javascript that accesses the API and allows users to perform tasks. (Front-end)
3. Spinning up infrastructure to support a new mobile app that the company is building, paying careful attention to how it might scale if the app takes off ala Pokemon Go.
4. Writing tests that automatically ensure that the new app remains reliable and can handle a large load of traffic.

Types of Entry-Level software engineer Jobs

As you know by now, specialization is important. However, when searching for entry-level jobs, it’s even more important to become familiar with all of the different verbiage that an employer might use to describe their position. If you know what terms to search by, you’ll be far more likely to be able to find all of the available positions and narrow them down to the ones you’re most interested in.

Another great search strategy is to use software languages as keywords. Employers are often working on a Java or C stack and need engineers that can work in those languages.

Here are a few search terms you could use to search for entry-level software engineering postions:

Salary Expectations

The median salary for entry-level software engineers is $75,275.
The range is $54,084 – $110,908.

The higher end of this range is quite high and is often skewed significantly by the larger tech companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) and the competitiveness for their entry-level positions. They’ve been known to give $500,000 signing bonuses to the best recent grads. Crazy!

Location is one the largest factors in calculating salary, so it’s particularly helpful to consider the entire salary range.

The Bureau of Labor expects the number of software engineer jobs to grow by 17% over the next 10 years. That’s incredible growth. It’s no secret that software development is one of the most promising career choices.

Who Typically Gets These Jobs

Every year, we survey over 20,000 students and recent grads in an effort to understand the internship and entry-level job market. Based on the results of our State of Hiring report, the students or recent graduates that apply to these entry-level jobs have several things in common:

• While many students are willing to look at jobs unrelated to their major, computer science majors are not. 72% of them only want to consider software development jobs.
• San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle are the most popular destination for computer science grads.
• Surprisingly enough, 75% of graduating computer science majors have worked a paid side job. Employers see this as a major benefit, as one of their primary concerns with engineers is how they will fair in a post-college work environment.
• Only 28% of graduating seniors majoring in software engineer have no internship experience.
• Most computer science students will not have any student debt when they graduate.
• Almost 56% of seniors majoring in computer science have taken an online course related to their major.

Related Entry-Level Fields

Despite it being somewhat rare that software engineer majors seek jobs outside of their immediate major, it does happen. When they do go outside, here are the areas they’re most likely to look at:

Additional Resources

1. It never hurts to brush up on a few software engineer topics. You can take a few online courses to get back in the swing of things.
2. For more salary information, head over to Payscale.
3. For more advice on starting your entry-level job search, check out our guide!
4. And finally, to prepare for an entry-level job interview, prepare for the top 20 entry-level job interview questions.

Next, get more career tips for internships and entry-level jobs such as What is an Entry-Level Job? and find answers to common interview questions such as Tell me about yourself.

• Tags:
• entry-level job,
• technology,
• underclassman,
• postgrad,
• senior,
• CS + IT + Math,
• Engineering

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Software engineering interviews, like other technical interviews, require plenty of preparation. There are a number of subjects that need to be covered in order to ensure you are ready for back-to-back questions on algorithms, data structures, design, optimization and honestly just an ever growing basket of subjects.

So I created a checklist on my last round of interviews that covers many of the popular topics.

To help you keep track of your progress, we’ve compiled a comprehensive checklist of the same problems listed below; that list can be found here.

Warm Up With The Classics

1. Fizz Buzz
2. 560. Subarray Sum Equals K
3. Arrays: Left Rotation
4. Strings: Making Anagrams
5. Nth Fibonacci

How did you do? Take a moment and rate yourself on these classics. We have been asked most of these at some point in the interview process—and often early on as weed-out style questions. They often have less to do with algorithms and data structures, but still require a good understanding of loops and arrays (yes, an array is a data structure).

Algorithms And Data Structures

Pre-Study Problems

Before going through the video content about data structures and algorithms, consider trying out these problems below. See if you can answer them. This will help you know what to focus on.

Algorithms And Data Structures Videos

Data Structures

Algorithms

Big O Notation

1. Introduction to Big O Notation and Time Complexity (Data Structures & Algorithms #7) — Video
2. Harvard CS50 — Asymptotic Notation — Video
3. A Gentle Introduction to Algorithm Complexity Analysis — Post
4. Cheat sheet — Post

Dynamic Programming

1. Dynamic Programming (Think Like a Programmer) — Video
2. Algorithms: Memoization and Dynamic Programming — Video
3. 6.006: Dynamic Programming I: Fibonacci, Shortest Paths — Video
4. 6.006: Dynamic Programming II: Text Justification, Blackjack — Video
5. Dynamic Programming — Post

String Manipulation

1. Coding Interview Question and Answer: Longest Consecutive Characters — Video
2. Sedgewick — Substring Search — Video

Interview Problem Walk-throughs

1. Google Coding Interview — Universal Value Tree Problem — Video
2. Google Coding Interview Question and Answer #1: First Recurring Character — Video
3. Find min and max element in a binary search tree — Video
4. Find height of a binary tree — Video
5. Check if a binary tree is binary search tree or not — Video
6. What Is Tail Recursion? Why Is It So Bad? — Video

Post-Study Problems

Now that you have studied for a bit, and watched a few videos, let’s try some more problems!

Operational Programming Problems

Some companies won’t ask you algorithm problems. Instead, they might focus more on implementation and operational problems. These are usually more niche and involve practical problems, like looping through data and performing a task of some sort. These types of problems don’t usually require as much practice because it is more about taking basic concepts like arrays and HashMaps and keeping track of what you are doing to them.

System Design Videos

System design questions are crucial questions that show you are more than just a coder. You need to be able to think big picture as an engineer. Where do certain services belong, what kind of servers do you need, how would you manage traffic, etc. All of these ideas show that you are able to design software, not just code what people tell you to code.

1. Parking Lot System — Video
2. Whats App — Video
3. Uber design — Video
4. Instagram — Video
5. Tinder Service — Video

Operating Systems

Operating system questions are a little more rare, but it is good to have a solid understanding of concepts like threads, scheduling, memory, etc., even if it is just a basic understanding. It is very embarrassing to get asked what the difference is between a process and a thread and not know the answer.

Threads

Object Oriented

Similar to operating systems, not every interview will ask you about object-oriented programming, but you never know. You want to make sure you remember your basics from your computer 162 course.

Design Patterns

If you were like us, we weren’t taught about all the various design patterns. So it’s good to get an understanding of how they work and why you would use them. Some interview questions can be as simple as, “Why would you use a factory class?”

This is the last section. Many of you probably won’t be asked that many SQL questions. However, I always think it is good to have in your back pocket.

SQL — Problems

1. 262. Trips and Users
2. 601. Human Traffic of Stadium
3. 185. Department Top Three Salaries
4. 626. Exchange Seats
5. Hackerrank The Report
6. 177. Nth Highest Salary
7. Symmetric Pairs
8. OccupationsPlacements
9. Ollivander’s Inventory

SQL — Videos

1. IQ15: 6 SQL Query Interview Questions — Video
2. Learning about ROW_NUMBER and Analytic Functions — Video
3. Advanced Implementation Of Analytic Functions — Video
4. Advanced Implementation Of Analytic Functions Part 2 — Video
5. Wise Owl SQL Videos — Video

Post SQL Problems

1. Binary Tree Nodes
2. Weather Observation Station 18
3. ChallengesPrint Prime Numbers
4. 595. Big Countries
5. 626. Exchange Seats
6. SQL Interview Questions: 3 Tech Screening Exercises (For Data Analysts)

Interviewing can be tough because you can feel like you are making no progress. Having this study guide will help you track your progress and give you a better read on how you are doing!

Posted on Sep 15, 2019 by:

SeattleDataGuy

Software Engineer | Consultant | Data Scientist