An Overview of Engineering Interviews at 18 Companies Hiring on Elpha Right Now

Have you ever found yourself hesitant to apply for a role because you weren’t sure what the process would be?

Yeah, us too. With this in mind, Elpha has been working with our partner companies to understand what their processes look like, both to provide context and to help our job seekers make informed decisions about where they put their interview time. 

💡 TIP: We recommend that job seekers ask questions upfront to understand the timeline that this process takes place in and any other questions that show your proactive and passionate desire to find the right match.

We hope this overview demystifies next steps and sets you up for success! 💁🏽‍♀️

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OneSchema

What do they do?: Import customer CSV data 10x faster. One Schema gets their customers out of spreadsheets and back to the meaningful, creative work they love. 🏎

Tech Stack: React, Typescript, Rust Sinatra, Postgres, Redis, and S3

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. Phone screen with CTO (the hiring manager) 20 min

2. Phone interview via Coderpad 60 min 

3. Onsite (final stage, in-person or virtual) ~4-5 hours

   1. Welcome (15 min.) 

   2. Pair Programming Interview (60 min.) 

   3. Pair Programming (60 min.) 

   4. Culture Interview (45 min.) 

   5. Architecture Deep Dive FE / BE (45 min.)

   6. Founder chat (30 min.)

Slab

What do they do?: Slab is building a scalable knowledge base and wiki software to improve how teams share and retain information. As a company building tools for documentation and asynchronous work, they focus on making internal information as transparent and accessible as possible. 🧠

Tech Stack: React, Typescript, Elixir

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. Virtual asynchronous take-home coding challenge that can be conducted in the language of a candidate's choice. 1 hour

2. A two-part virtual onsite:

   1. Either a debugging or architecture challenge. 2 hours

   2. A starter-code project designed to simulate what it would be like to work together. 1 hour

ModernLoop

What do they do?: Their mission is to help companies deliver the best candidate experience by automating and streamlining recruiting operations. 💫

Tech Stack: Java, React

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. An initial live coding interview with a team member 

2. Virtual onsite: 

   1. Another live coding interview

   2. A systems architecture interview 

   3. A behavioral interview

Flexport

What do they do?: Flexport believes global trade can move the human race forward. 🚢

Tech Stack: Java, Kotlin, React, Ruby/Rails

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. Recruiter screen

2. Technical Interview: programming problem conducted with a Flexport engineer over Google Hangout. 1 hour

3. Virtual onsite with 5 rounds: 

   1. Coding round 

   2. Bug hunt problem 

   3. Project deep dive 

   4. Behavioral interview with the hiring manager 

   5. System design question 

Gem

What do they do?: Gem is on a mission to build the operating system for a modern recruiting industry — one that’s candidate-focused, data-driven, and diversity-conscious. 💎

Tech Stack: Python, React

Engineering Interview Process:

1. A live coding challenge with one of our engineers. 1 hour

2. 1 full day onsite in which you would dive into Gem's codebase and work on a feature build with their onsite buddy

Convex

What do they do?: Convex is the global state management platform for web developers. 💻

Tech Stack: React, Rust, Typescript

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. Preliminary Phone Screen

2. Technical Phone Interview (live coding) or Take home

3. Onsite 3-4 interviews. 3-4 hours

   1. 1-2 live coding sessions

   2. 1 design/architecture/system design session

   3. 1 all-around session

Canopy

What do they do?: Canopy’s low-code solution helps fintechs, banks, credit unions, and brands to launch and sustain new financial products. 🤑

Tech Stack: NodeJS, React, Typescript

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. Initial call with the technical recruiter

2. Meet the Director of Engineering for 1 hour over Zoom to:

   1.  Talk values (https://canopyservicing.com/about/) 

   2.  Complete a pair programming exercise in any language (Canopy is tech agnostic). 

3. Meet two other team members to continue assessing technical abilities. 

   1. For backend roles, the prompts will focus on systems design and api design. 

   2. For frontend roles, there will be paired programming exercises utilizing React and TailwindCSS. It is not required for people to know React or TailwindCSS before - Canopy just wants to see how you communicate and how you solve problems :)

Airplane

What do they do?: Airplane is building a developer platform for internal tools. ✈️

Tech Stack: Golang, NodeJS, React, Typescript

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. A technical programming question and a system design exercise.

2. A longer coding project plus discussion of past technical projects.

Here

What do they do?: Here is where friends and communities hang out in fully customized (and personalized) online rooms. Their mission is to create a sense of closeness even if you’re worlds away. They believe that the Internet should be fun, weird, and shared with others. 🌎

Tech Stack: Java, Kotlin, NodeJS, React, Swift, Typescript

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. One interview with each co-founder ~ 45 mins each

2. A Full Loop is 4 or 5 conversations, about 4.5 hours total time (can be done in one day or broken up across two or three). Schedule usually includes:

   1. One Live Coding session

   2. One Tech Design session

   3. One Engineering Culture Fit session

   4. One General Culture Fit session

   5. One Product Sense/Work with Design session

Here makes a hiring decision after the loop. The entire process typically takes about 10 to 14 days to complete from the first conversation.

Heroic Story

What do they do?: Heroic Story is making a new kind of game, where players build stories and fantasy worlds together. The players get ownership of their creation at the end by receiving NFTs. Think Dungeons & Dragons meets HQ Trivia or Who Wants to be a Millionaire. They broadcast the whole thing live as a game show. 🎲

Tech Stack: NodeJS, React, Typescript

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. A short technical test or a 2 week contract

Binti

What do they do?: Binti partners with county and state governments as well as private agencies across 27 states to improve the foster care system. 🧒

Tech Stack: Ruby/Rails

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. A conversation with the hiring manager

2. A (take-home) technical test using the platform Woven 

3. A set of "panel interviews" assessing collaboration, project management, values, and technical skills. NOTE: The technical skills test as part of the panel interviews is a live collaborative coding exercise in Binti's actual codebase.

Grow Therapy

What do they do?: Grow Therapy is transforming mental healthcare accessibility by helping therapists launch tech-driven, in-network practices. To ensure that anyone can afford quality mental healthcare, they are building America’s biggest behavioral healthcare group with in-network private practices powered by game-changing technology. 🪴

Tech Stack: Python, Typescript

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. An Intro Call 

2. A Take Home 

3. A Final Round of Interviews to discuss:

   1. The Take Home 

   2. Systems Design

   3. Product Interview

   4. Behavioral Interview

Open positions at Grow Therapy:

See 13 more jobs at Grow Therapy

Modern Treasury

What do they do?: Modern Treasury’s mission is to transform the way businesses move and track money, driving toward a world where payments are real-time, reconciliation is instant, and accounting is continuous. 💵

Tech Stack: Ruby on Rails for backend framework. React, GraphQL, and Tailwind CSS on the front end Postgres for database. Redis for caching. AWS for infrastructure and hosting Docker for containerization. GitHub for source code management. Buildkite for continuous integration.

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. A Recruiter Phone Screen

2. CodeSignal (live via Zoom with engineer at Modern Treasury)

3. Hiring Manager Screen (CTO or EVP of Eng)

4. Onsite Interview 

   1. 1 coding

   2. 1 systems design

   3. 1 behavioral

   4. interview with EVP or CTO of Eng

Open positions at Modern Treasury:

See 4 more jobs at Modern Treasury

Zapier

What do they do?: Zapier is on a mission to make automation incredibly easy and accessible to everyone at work. With Zapier, you can integrate apps like Salesforce, Intuit, Google, and Dropbox, to move data between them automatically, so you can focus on your most important work. ⚡️

Tech Stack: Golang, NodeJS, Python, Typescript, React

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. A Recruiter screen

2. A manager interview

3. A take home coding assessment (not time bound)

4. A skills interview with some team members

5. A final interview with a Director

Open positions at Zapier:

See 7 more jobs at Zapier

Universe

What do they do?: Universe is a magical new way to build websites –– it’s the first website builder designed for phones. 📱

Tech Stack: NodeJS, React, Swift, Typescript

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. A Introductory Phone Call 

2. A Small take home project - varies by role. 

   1. Typically a very simple project on the platform most related to the role. (2-4 hours)

3. Technical Interview - One of the following:

   1. Similar to an in person code review, the technical interview is a chance to talk through what decisions you made in the project, understand why you made them, give you feedback on things we saw that we did / didn't like and have a conversation about those. This is less about having the "right" answer and more about seeing what it is like to work with you, and give you the same chance to preview what it would be like to work with us. 

   2. For high experience roles, or roles that don't make sense to have a take home project for, a technical panel interview instead of the Technical Interview. The goal here is really to get an understanding of what it is like to work through problems with you, and give you a chance to see how we like to work. These will be very much related to the actual problems that we are looking to have the person in this role solve. There is no whiteboarding, irrelevant technical "gotchas" or anything you would need to memorize in advance. We'd like this to be as related to the job itself as possible. 

4. Meet the CEO 

5. Meet the team

Ethena

What do they do?: Ethena provides compliance training for modern teams. They break larger topics - like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - into smaller and more digestible training delivered throughout the year so it stays top of mind. Ethena was started by two women, a military veteran and a software engineer. 🌟

Tech Stack: Ethena’s stack starts with a MySQL RDS database. They also use SQS and SNS queues. Backend is a Typescript Node.Js API server running Express.js. Frontend runs Next.js and they recently added Typescript to it as well. Also NodeJS and React.

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. A 30-minute call with a Recruiter

2. Two technical interviews take place. In between A and B, Ethena will let you know if you will be moving forward:

   1. A technical screen

      1. Collaborate with one or two of our engineers in a shared coding environment. Ethena will present you with a set of possible challenges for you to work on so you can choose your own adventure.

   2. A virtual “onsite”

      1. A systems design interview

      2. A debugging interview

      3. A values interview

Ethena strives to create as inclusive an environment as possible, so communicate with your interviewer(s) and let them know if or when you need a minute to gather your thoughts. We want to make things as stress-free as possible for you!

We will make our final decision as quickly as possible, and let you know if we’ll be making an offer.

Just Appraised

What do they do?: Just Appraised makes software for local governments. More specifically, they are building software to streamline local government tax assessors’ workflows using machine learning. 🏛

Tech Stack: Java, React, Python, C#

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. An interview with the hiring manager with questions about work experience, what you are looking for in a role and what we have to offer. 

2. A technical interview and/or a take home coding test.

Open positions at Just Appraised:

See 1 more jobs at Just Appraised

Nova Credit

What do they do?: Nova Credit’s mission is to power a fair and inclusive financial system for the world, one in which reliable data and technology empowers people to be represented fairly, regardless of their country of origin. They started their journey serving the financial needs of newcomers to the U.S. and are now expanding that capability to not only advance credit access for newcomers globally but also support credit access for all those discouraged by the current credit system. 💳

Tech Stack: NodeJS, React, Typescript

Engineering Interview Process: 

1. An intro call to get to know us and vice versa!

2. A 60-minute tech screen, live coding challenge

3. A full-day virtual onsite (or interviews scheduled across multiple days) with live coding and behavioral questions with different members of the team

Open positions at Nova Credit:

See 4 more jobs at Nova Credit