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:
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.
When you are preparing for the Stripe interview process, ensure that you meet the following eligibility criteria before you apply:
The interview process at Stripe consists of three rounds — Recruiter Phone Screen, Technical Phone Screen, and On-site Interview.
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:
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:
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:
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:
This part of the final round will help the interviewers gauge your coding skills and proficiency in data structures.
Some sample questions:
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:
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.
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:
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.
Some tips to keep in mind when preparing for the Stripe interview process are:
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.
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.
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