Everything You Need to Know About the Stripe Interview Process

In addition to being one of the fastest-growing financial startups in the world, Stripe is also known for its great work culture. If you are a software engineer looking to land a job at Stripe, you should be well-versed with their interview process. 

More practical than technical as compared to the other tech companies, the process ensures that only the most suitable software engineer is selected. With the help of their interview process, Stripe aims to find those who can effectively help them in smoothly running the company’s software.

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As you gear up to prepare for the Stripe interview process, remember to be thorough. To give you some in-depth information about the process, here’s what we’ll cover in this article:

• About Stripe
• Eligibility Criteria for Stripe Interview Process
• Stripe Interview Process
• Tips to Ace the Stripe Interview Process
• FAQs on Stripe Interview Process

About Stripe

Irish-American financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company, Stripe is dually headquartered in San Francisco, United States and Dublin, Ireland. Primarily, the company provides online payment processing and cred card processing software to its clients. 

Whenever a customer purchases something online, Stripe helps in facilitating the transaction between the buyer and the seller. It provides a safe and efficient payment processing platform for the processing of funds via credit card or bank so that online payment can be done in a secure manner.

Eligibility Criteria for Stripe Interview Process

When you are preparing for the Stripe interview process, ensure that you meet the following eligibility criteria before you apply:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or equivalent technical experience
• Familiarity with the Stripe API
• Knowledge of at least one programming Strip supports (PHP, Java, Go, Node.js, Python, Ruby, and .NET)
• Knowledge of the best practices catering to the handling of financial information and processing transactions
• Understand the required data protection and security measures needed to handle private financial data

Stripe Interview Process

The interview process at Stripe consists of three rounds — Recruiter Phone Screen, Technical Phone Screen, and On-site Interview.

Recruiter Phone Screen

Typically, in this round, you’ll be engaging in an informal chat with the recruiter. The recruiter will ask you about your experiences, educational qualifications, and so on. Even you can ask any questions you might have, such as what the different roles entail and what’ll be expected of you if you join.

The Stripe interview process is mainly aimed at determining whether you’ll be a cultural fit for the company or not. Toward the end of the initial screening call, the recruiter will schedule the next round.

Following are some questions you can expect in this round of Stripe’s interview process:

• Why Stripe?
• How did you hear about Stripe?
• What is your understanding of Stripe?
• Tell me about your career aspirations.
• Talk about a project you’ve worked on in the past that you’re really proud of.

Technical Phone Screen

After the initial introductions, that’ll take around 5-10 minutes, the technical round will begin. It lasts about an hour. You’ll need to share your screen and do live coding using your preferred programming language.

Usually, the interviewer will ask you one question with a lot of follow-up questions. When preparing for this part of the Stripe interview process, focus on the following topics:

• Databases
• System Design
• Heaps
• Data Structures 

In some cases, you might even have two technical interview rounds instead of just one. The format is the same as it is for the first tech round.

Questions you can expect in this round of Stripe’s interview process:

• Create a database class for a given problem. 
• Given a min-heap, print all nodes less than a given value x.
• Within the sample database, write the unit tests to cover all cases.
• Given a database, design a method to find the minimum value in a specific column.

Onsite Interview

This round generally consists of 5 interviews that take place over a period of 3-4 days. Before you appear for this round, you’ll get a preparation guide to know what to expect and what to practice for. 

The five rounds in the part of Stripe’s interview process are:

1. Coding Interview

This part of the final round will help the interviewers gauge your coding skills and proficiency in data structures. 

Some sample questions:

• Given: Some values. Task: Write the sets of values whose sum is X.
• Given: A list of maps and keys. Task: Return the lowest corresponding value among the maps. 

2. Behavioral Interview

The hiring manager will be taking this interview and assessing your team and leadership skills. They’ll also be gauging whether you’re a cultural fit for the company or not.

Some sample questions:

• Tell us about a time when you had to resolve a difficult situation within the team.
• Tell us about a time you had a difference of opinion with a team member. How did you resolve it?
• How do you handle negative feedback?

3. Bug Hunt

A codebase will be provided to you and you’ll have to run different tests to see where the bud(s) in the program are. Further, you’ll have to come up with ways to resolve those bugs. There’ll be a time frame in which you’ll have to complete the task.

4. System Design

The Stripe interview process is designed to also test your system design skills. In this part of the interview, your ability to build a large-scale system, your thought process, and what factors you’ll consider when designing it will be assessed. 

Questions for this round of Stripe’s interview process:

• Design the frontend and backend for a logging system.
• Sketch out a database for a product such as a toy.
• Design an architecture for delivering webhooks to customers.

5. Integration Task

You’ll have to integrate new code into an already existing codebase in this round. You need to have good knowledge of HTTP Rest calls, parsing JSON, and sending requests to APIs.

Tips to Ace the Stripe Interview Process

Some tips to keep in mind when preparing for the Stripe interview process are:

• Don’t get too hassled if a question seems too complex. Usually, complex questions are the easiest. So just re-read the question calmly.
• Throughout the Stripe interview process, the interviewers are trying to understand your thought process. You can make it a lot easier for them to do so by keeping your answers as clear and simple as possible.
• When practicing for the interview, ensure that you also practice in pair programming format since in the tech phone round, your interviewer will act as your pair.
• You can follow the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, and Result) when answering for the behavioral interview.
• If you have a problem understanding a question, clear any doubts that you might have beforehand. This is much better than making a mistake over some confusion.
  

The Stripe interview process can get quite intense and complex. But this doesn’t mean that it isn’t crackable. You’ll need to keep at it and practice. One pro tip is to research the company thoroughly and dig up the questions they are most likely to ask you. 

FAQs on Stripe Interview Process

Some commonly asked questions about the Stripe interview process:

Q1. How many rounds are there in the Stripe interview process?

The entire process is divided into three parts — Phone Screen Round, Technical Phone Round, and On-site Interview. The on-site interview consists of 5 rounds (coding interview, behavioral interview, bug hunt, system design, and integration task).

Q2. How long does the Stripe interview process take?

The five rounds of the on-site interview last about 45 mins each. Overall, from the first phone screen round to the on-site interview, the entire Stripe interview process can take anywhere between 2-4 weeks.

Q3. Is Stripe a good company to work at?

Stripe has an overall rating of 4.1 out of 5 according to the 287 reviews left by anonymous employees. Out of these, 77% would recommend the company to a friend and 88% have a positive outlook for the business. (Glassdoor)

Q4. Is the Stripe interview process hard?

Popular for its developer-first approach to building products, the company has a great engineering culture and hiring bar. The Stripe interview process is known for being quite complex and focusing more on practical knowledge than theoretical. 

Q5. How long does it take to hear back from Stripe?

After the on-site interview, you can expect to hear from the company in a few days. If you don’t then probably you didn't crack the interview. 

Ready to Crack Your Next Tech Interview at Stripe? 

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