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Answers)

INTERVIEWING

29 Software Engineer Interview Questions (With Example Answers)

August 5, 2021

By: David Granado

David is a software engineer with over 13 years in the industry and a passion for web
technologies. His work experience ranges from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

When interviewing for a software engineer position, the hiring manager may ask you a variety of
questions related to your skills and experience. As you prepare for your next interview, it may be
helpful to review some of the most commonly asked questions and prepare answers for them. In
this article, we discuss some of the top software engineer interview questions and offer examples
of how to answer them effectively.

Common software engineer interview questions

When preparing for a software engineering interview, it can be helpful to review sample answers
to some of the most frequently asked questions, such as:

What programming languages are you familiar with?

Describe the last project you worked on including, any obstacles and your contributions to its
success.

What are your thoughts on declarative vs. imperative paradigms such as functional and object-
oriented programming?

What are your most used design patterns and in what contexts do you use them?

What is “Agile” software development and what are your thoughts on it?

What are your thoughts on software testing?

Describe a difficult bug you were tasked with fixing in a large application. How did you debug
the issue?

How do you explain technical challenges to stakeholders who do not have technical knowledge
or backgrounds?

What aspect of our company, product or team interests you most?

How do you determine a project’s success?

What programming languages are you familiar with?

A software engineer should have experience with a wide range of programming languages. This
knowledge is vital to having success in this role. Before your interview, review the job
description to see if they mention whether or not you'll need programming language experience
for the role. Respond with languages you're familiar with that match the employer's needs.

Example: “I am proficient in Java, C++, JavaScript, C#, Ruby and Python. Of these
programming languages, I feel most comfortable working with Java, C# and C++. In my
previous role, I worked mainly with Java to create applications that worked across multiple
platforms. I also used C++ to develop a new operating system that worked with the applications I
engineered. Using C#, I was able to improve my productivity when developing web-based apps
and software.”

Describe the last project you worked on, including any obstacles and your contributions to its
success.

A question relating to a specific project will help the interviewer better understand your process
and how you handle adversity while working on a specific task.

As you answer this question, use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action and Result) to craft
a detailed, informative answer. Start by describing the situation, which allows you to provide all
the necessary details about the project on which you were working. Next, discuss the tasks you
were assigned to outline your level of responsibility. When describing the action you took,
include the steps you took to achieve a goal and finish with the result of the project.

Example: “A previous employer tasked me with creating an internal online learning and training
program for employees. The purpose of the program was to make sure all employees received
proper training on certain topics, including customer service, compliance with legal requirements
and workplace ethics. I began by researching other similar training systems to figure out what
worked and what didn't. Next, I used Java to code a simple program, which I then used to upload
training courses.
After testing the simplified program, I added elements to make it more engaging to employees,
such as games and interactive quizzes. This program was well-received by the employees of the
organization, and their customer service success rates increased by 25% after all team members
took the required course.”

What are your thoughts on declarative vs. imperative paradigms such as functional and object-
oriented programming?

“Programming paradigm” is a broad categorization for languages as either declarative or

imperative. However, it is useful to consider these general programming styles rather than
concrete language directives. While certain approaches may be cumbersome in some, there are
many that are not as rigid. Languages such as JavaScript and Java allow either approach to be
taken, even if they lend themselves toward one approach over another.

With questions like this, employers want to gauge your familiarity with more abstract concepts
in software engineering. There are many approaches for writing high-quality, maintainable
software. Intelligently implementing a programming paradigm requires knowing at least some of
the benefits and trade-offs of each.

As with any subjective question, there can be strong opinions on the topic. While answers should
be stated confidently and with supporting experiences, it is very easy to slip into speaking
negatively about your less-favored approach. The interviewer could have the opposite opinion,
creating avoidable tension. Focusing on objective obstacles you face with the approach will
avoid the situation and potentially open a friendly dialogue on the pros and cons of each.

Example: “There was a project where we were tasked with reworking the browser client
application. It used an imperative, object-oriented approach with many of the custom controls
getting much of their functionality from a growing inheritance hierarchy. We took this as an
opportunity to shift to a more declarative approach. After the conversion, we saw a dramatic
decline in state-related bugs as we were no longer manually updating the interface in response to
events. This had previously been the most common type of user-reported bug.

We did, however, have to make adjustments in a few key places. In more dynamic, performance-
sensitive portions of the application, the caching mechanisms we implemented to prevent
excessive recalculation were becoming overly complex. We simplified this by switching back to
an imperative approach to updating the component.”

What are your most used design patterns and in what contexts do you use them?

Similar to the previous question, this probes your knowledge of more abstract, theoretical
concepts. Very few people are familiar with all of the formalized software design patterns. In
fact, many well-established engineers have a hard time even naming more than a few. After
reviewing the topic, you may realize that you leverage many of these patterns daily, even if you
aren't aware of the formal name. Reviewing these concepts helps provide a common shorthand,
streamlining complex discussions.

Example: "For gaming projects, my level state and player character are generally implemented as
singletons. For enemy creation, I’ll use a factory that will produce differing enemies based on
some inputs. Additionally, the bullets being fired by the character will be implemented in an
object pool to avoid performance hits from excessive instantiation and garbage collection. If the
game is more complex, I may switch to a compositional model such as Entity-Component-
System. The system functions would then leverage dependency injection to better separate
concerns and increase testability of the game logic."

What is “Agile” software development and what are your thoughts on it?

Process is an extremely important component of software development. “Agile” is currently one

of the most popular software development processes adopted in the industry. The core concepts
were introduced in 2001 when “The Manifesto for Agile Software Development” was published.
Since its inception, growing numbers of companies have adopted the methodologies in some
form. However, there are a wide range of opinions and interpretations on the subject. Some
invest the time to train for Agile certification while others use the principles as guidelines rather
than hard rules, interpreting “Agile” as an adjective rather than a noun. And there are yet others
who wholly disagree with the philosophy.

No matter your opinion, wide industry adoption means you will likely work within the
framework at some point in your career. You should be capable of articulating the details of the
process. Try using concrete examples from your experience. In your answer, address areas of the
process such as:
What worked about the process?

What did not?

Did your team deviate from the recommendations?

Did that work to your benefit or detriment?

Example: "Agile software development is a process that focuses on incremental delivery by the
team as a whole. The project is broken up into small chunks that are able to be completed within
a given timeframe called ‘sprints.’ In my previous role, we were quite successful in adopting the
process. We used two-week sprints and kept high contact with many face-to-face discussions to
review questions and concerns as they arose.

In addition, we had daily standup meetings to keep everyone synced on team progress. The only
adjustment to the process I would have made was in regard to our standup meetings. The name
‘standup’ refers to literal standing meetings to encourage focus and brevity. However, our
meetings tended to transition over into standard status meetings for our team lead rather than
remaining a time for our team to sync. Other than this, the process really did facilitate delivering
higher quality software on a more predictable timetable."

What are your thoughts on software testing?

Testing is an extremely important component of the software development life cycle because it
ensures the quality of the software before it is deployed to users. Approaches to testing range
from manually testing the application to writing test suites for individual code modules, or “unit
testing.” Within these approaches, there are many schools of thought. For example, unit tests
may be written in a strict test-driven process where failing tests are written before any business
logic, aiming for 100% of the code to be exercised. There are other approaches that enumerate
particularly complex or sensitive code and write a test for those as opposed to every line.

In fact, the point is even debated amongst the writers of “The Manifesto for Agile Software
Development,” which arguably popularized testing as a standard part of the software
development process. In the 2015 talk, “Agile is Dead,” co-author “Pragmatic” Dave Thomas
stated, “I mostly don’t test.” This is in sharp contrast with other co-authors such as Martin
Fowler and Kent Beck who largely advocate for a test-driven approach.
You should have informed opinions on why you favor one approach over another. It will
demonstrate that you are aware of the range of methodologies and have made a choice based on
sound reasoning. Similar to speaking about Agile software development, negative statements
should be avoided in general.

Example: "Testing is vital to producing high-quality software for our users. However, in a new
project, I generally will not lead with them. I think of tests as a tool for locking down mature
functionality. Often, the project concept varies quite a bit from the final product as we begin
collecting usage metrics and feedback. For this reason, I will begin with simple manual testing.
As the feature set stabilizes, I will then begin to implement tests. The majority of my test suite
will be unit tests that target key areas of the application.

Additionally, I’ll have a narrow set of integration tests leveraging Selenium. To ensure execution
time isn’t excessive, I’ll focus those tests on the most vital user interactions. Finally, assuming
the infrastructure provided by the DevOps team supports it, a canary deployment will be
leveraged for each release to ensure any potential impact of missed bugs is limited.”

Describe a difficult bug you were tasked with fixing in a large application. How did you debug
the issue?

Bugs usually appear in new applications and software programs, and it's a software engineer's
responsibility to locate and resolve these issues. Difficult bugs are often the result of an unusual
alignment of conditions. Hearing your experience of resolving bugs explores several aspects of
your skills including critical thinking and how well you handle stress and pressure.

Example: "I received a bug report from our DevOps team about one of our databases being
stressed from an expensive query being called excessively from the UI. I first checked the logs to
find out when the trouble started. This gave me the rough commit range in which the bug was
introduced. I was able to reproduce the bug on the latest piece of code, but only in production. I
ran a git bisect to isolate the specific commit that introduced the bug and pulled the branch.
However, I was not able to reproduce the issue. I went to the UI to debug using the browser
devtools. Sourcemaps are not available in our production environment, so I had to map the
minified JavaScript code to the source CoffeeScript code.

I was able to determine that the offending method was being called on every page as opposed to
the occasional call from a lesser-used specific feature. Diving back into the commit I’d identified
earlier, I found no change in reference to the method. The only approximate change I could find
was an unrelated tweak to a line in a file that had a reference to it that had been “commented out”
about three years prior. I decided to deploy some distinct logging statements to ensure that I had
correctly identified the method. My logging confirmed the connection. After some additional
rounds of logging, I was able to identify an unfortunate bug in CoffeeScript in which the code
that had been “commented out” years earlier was being included in minified production code due
to an alignment of the tweak and another piece of code from another developer that had been
merged into master minutes before."

How do you explain technical challenges to stakeholders who do not have technical knowledge
or backgrounds?

Businesses form software development teams to solve problems for real people. Being deeply
immersed in development, it’s easy to forget this. While some engineers may wish to be
provided software requirements and work uninterrupted on a project “until it’s ready,” it’s
important to remember that stakeholders in non-technical departments—like customer success
and marketing—must plan around the development. Unforeseen obstacles often present
themselves in one form or another, requiring a conversation on how to best solve the problem.
Employers want to know that you are able to clearly communicate these obstacles to non-
technical stakeholders, ensuring all parties are fully informed when decisions are made.

Example: "When confronted with an obstacle, I don’t feel it is my job to unilaterally alter the
project scope or tell stakeholders that something can’t be done. The quality of software is often a
matter of balancing scope, cost and time. That balance is a business decision as opposed to a
technical one. Rather, I come up with some potential alternatives and present their impact on that
balance. For example, if an impediment may significantly push delivery beyond what was
projected, I might present an alternative that can meet the current timeline with much of the same
scope but will likely diminish the quality and degrade the user experience.

Or, perhaps I’d suggest lowering the priority of certain features related to the obstacle allowing
us to deliver some portion of the original feature set in the planned delivery window. This is
often the starting point of a conversation as the stakeholders begin asking more questions about
what can or can’t be done. This collaborative process ensures that all parties are confident in the
final decision.”

What aspect of our company, product or team interests you most?

Retention is a high priority for many employers. Replacing a team member can be quite
expensive in cost terms of recruitment and training time. Asking questions to ensure your
interests and motivations align with that of the company can reduce the risk of losing you as a
team member. Though you’re ideally excited by the mission of the company, it is not uncommon
for companies to use niche technology specifically to attract higher-quality talent. To answer this
question, incorporate details from your research that speak specifically to the company’s values,
past projects or a responsibility mentioned in the job description that aligns with your career
motivations and progression.

Example: "I was watching an interview with your CEO about your product that aims to disrupt
the lending industry. Streamlining arduous tasks like loan applications has huge potential. I think
the growth in this sector over the last year is a big indication of things to come. Additionally, I’m
excited by the untapped potential of blockchain technology you have recently decided to
incorporate. I see this as giving your company the competitive advantage in this space as the
verifiable auditability will reduce compliance costs."

How do you determine a project’s success?

While releasing high-quality software is vital, software that doesn’t address the needs of the user
and the business produces little value. Employers want to know that you are thinking beyond the
technical aspects and aim to solve real-world problems. This often comes down to identifying a
metric to improve and creating a testable hypothesis of your expected project impact.

Example: "Before a project is even started, success metrics are laid out. I will identify the key
performance indicator (KPI) that we are hoping to impact and begin gathering information to
formulate ideas. These ideas are stated as a falsifiable hypothesis. For example, ‘We believe that
reducing checkout steps will increase sales conversion. An increase of 2% will be considered a
positive signal.’ This keeps the team focused on the impact of our projects on the business’s
bottom line."

Here are some additional questions grouped by category that you can practice answering in
preparation for an interview:

General interview questions

Some questions you may face in a software engineer position interview are general. The purpose
of these questions is to get to know more about your personality and how you could fit in the
workplace culture, such as:

What were your main responsibilities in your previous job?

When was the last time you were in a crunch? What could have prevented the situation and what
changed to avoid it in the future?

Why should we hire you as a software engineer on our team?

What are your favorite software engineering books and why?

How do you work independently and as part of a team? Which do you prefer?

Do you prefer “startup" company environments or in a more established atmosphere? Why?

What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?

Describe a time you overcame a non-technical obstacle at work.

Related: "Tell Me About Yourself" for Software Engineer Interviews

Software engineer interview questions about experience and background

In addition to the general questions, a hiring manager could ask, you will likely also need to
answer questions about your background and experience in the software engineering industry.
These questions will allow you to elaborate more on the skills you have gained through your
education and work experience.

Describe your process for completing a project from start to finish.

What scaling issues have you had to deal with on past projects? How could it have been avoided
and how did you solve it?

Tell me about a time that you had to collaborate with other people on your team or other teams to
solve a complicated problem.

Describe the process your team currently implements for completing projects. What works well?
What would you change and why?
Which project management tools do you feel are most useful in your role as a software engineer?

Related: 21 Job Interview Tips: How To Make a Great Impression

In-depth software engineer interview questions

An interviewer may ask questions that allow you to showcase your knowledge regarding specific
aspects of the role, such as:

What are your favorite software development tools?

How much do you code daily in your current role?

What differentiates a good software engineer from a great one?

Describe what you believe are the key principles of software engineering.

How comfortable do you feel reviewing code written by others? What process do you follow
when reviewing someone else's code?

What are your most used design patterns and in what contexts do you use them?