What to expect in your Stripe interview
Got an interview with Stripe? Congratulations!... but the work has only just begun. There are many other people out there clamoring for the payments fintech's coveted compensation packages.
A number of software engineers have taken to jobs forum blind in the last few months to describe their experiences, and the challenges you face at each stage of the process.
What is Stripe's interview process?
Coding test
A common thread among tech interviewees is that the coding tests at Stripe are nothing like the Leetcode problems you see in bank interviews. Candidates are given a single multi-stage problem and asked to solve it.
One interviewee said his problem was "more interactive, and [he] was advised to make it conversational." His question consisted of "three parts, each building on top of the other." A Vancouver based engineer said the interview took 45 minutes and that "you are expected to write readable code and unit tests."
Character Interview
Sometimes this stage is interchangeable with the first, but it is very likely to be one of the first two stages in an interview. These appear to be the standard questions: Why do you want to join? What do you bring from your previous employer? etc.
Debugging Round
In this stage, you are given a complex piece of code and asked to, as the name suggests, debug it. One candidate who passed the round said it was "one big repo" with just a singular bug to fix, requiring candidates to look deep.
You can also expect this round for roles in data. While engineers will be debugging in a programming language like Java, data analysts will likely debug in SQL.
Integration Round
Another technical challenge, this one consists of three parts, and was part of the process for an integration engineer with over seven years of experience.
He recommends experience with REST (representational state transfer) client and JSON Parsing to succeed in this challenge. He also notes that, while he was not able to solve all three in the allotted time, he was given an opportunity to explain how he would have solved the third part.
Design Round
Stripe's business model revolves around providing products. This stage allows you to show an understanding of the design priorities in Stripe's product suite.
Another conversational round. One interviewee said they had to "talk about most of the design decisions and tradeoffs."
Of course, stripe is a massive institution with thousands of employees and hundreds of teams. No two interview processes will be exactly the same. Stripe alumni, let us know in the comments how this differs to your process when interviewing for it.
Stripe did not respond to request for comment.
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