Checkout.com interview questions

(London) Great experience with constant communication and thorough preparation before each round. The process consists of four steps: An initial call with a recruiter to better understand the position and assess the fit for the role. A technical screening with a series of questions about past experience, typical challenges faced as an engineer, best practices, etc. It might initially seem like a checklist, but it is actually open-ended. A coding round, which can be either a take-home task or a live coding session. I chose the take-home task, which took me about 5–6 hours to complete. The key here is not to overthink or overengineer. This is followed by a live questioning session about improvements and design decisions (again, very open-ended). The final round involves visiting the office (a rare experience nowadays) for an onsite system design interview, where I built a payment gateway, followed by a behavioral interview. It’s important to have a solid understanding of distributed systems and to brush up on security topics such as authentication, encryption, backups, etc. Overall, all interviewers were supportive and interactive. Communication was clear, and the offer was competitive, but I ultimately decided to accept an offer from my dream company.

Tough but fair interview process, however was not organised very well at all. Recruiters would send information too late and would not follow up in a timely or professional manner, be expected to chase them instead if you want updates! Interview process consisted of 5 rounds, the 4th being a case study. The first 3 interviews are behavioural mostly, and the team I met were polite, professional and friendly. However the case study provided is not clear and those who were interviewing me whilst presenting clearly didn't read or understand the case study well enough themselves. When pressed about poor results, interviewers were visibly uncomfortable and very confrontational/defensive when the question was asked; showing a lack of experience and professionalism when facing difficult, but fair, questions. Overall I would say what let this company down were their recruiters and the case study process. Their office is also not the nicest environment, it's run down, dirty, worn out and very cramped. Ultimately I declined the offer due to the people, the way they conducted themselves (before and during interviews) and the overall working space/observed cultured in the office.