39+ Software Engineer Interview Questions

Tell me about a time you had to meet a tight deadline. How did you manage it?

Describe a situation where you had a conflict with a colleague. How did you resolve it?

Tell me about a time you failed. What did you learn?

Give me an example of a time you had to influence someone without direct authority.

Tell me about a time you went above and beyond what was expected of you.

Describe a situation where you had to adapt quickly to a significant change.

Tell me about a time you had to prioritise between multiple important tasks. How did you decide?

Give an example of a time you had to give difficult feedback to someone.

Tell me about a project you are most proud of.

Describe a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information.

Tell me about a time you had to work with a difficult team member.

Give an example of a time you took the initiative to solve a problem no one had asked you to solve.

Describe a time you had to manage a stakeholder who was unhappy with progress or outcomes.

Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager's decision. What did you do?

Tell me about a time you successfully onboarded into a new team or role quickly.

If you discovered a significant error in a report that had already been sent to senior leadership, what would you do?

Your manager assigns you a project with an unrealistic deadline. What do you do?

You are midway through a project when the requirements change significantly. How do you handle it?

You notice a colleague is consistently missing deadlines and it is affecting your work. What do you do?

If you were asked to do something that felt ethically questionable, how would you respond?

How would you handle being assigned to two high-priority projects simultaneously with conflicting deadlines?

Imagine you join the team and quickly realise the processes in place are inefficient. What would you do?

Why do you want to work at this company specifically?

Where do you see yourself in five years?

What type of work environment do you thrive in?

What are your greatest strengths?

What is your greatest weakness?

Why are you leaving your current role?

How do you stay current in your field?

What does success look like to you in this role in the first 90 days?

How would you design a URL shortener at scale (e.g. bit.ly)?

Explain the difference between horizontal and vertical scaling. When would you choose each?

How do you approach debugging a production issue you've never seen before?

What is the difference between a mutex and a semaphore?

How would you improve the performance of a slow SQL query?

What is your approach to writing testable code?

Walk me through how you would approach a code review.

Explain CAP theorem and how it influenced a design decision you made.

How would you prioritise a backlog of 50 feature requests with limited engineering capacity?