Principal Software Engineer Interview Questions

2,162 principal software engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Confidential, I’d like to keep it this way as the company is a start up and I don’t wanna give out more information. All I can say is, in round 2 with the founders They are guaging your skills and assessing if you are a fit. Probably looking for someone who would yes their decisions. I questioned their choice of tech during this which I think might have triggered intuition. Overall a positive interview in terms of questions asked and answers. But not so in terms of them coming back after it.
avatar

Principal Software Engineer

Interviewed at Paylater Travel

5
Dec 10, 2023

Confidential, I’d like to keep it this way as the company is a start up and I don’t wanna give out more information. All I can say is, in round 2 with the founders They are guaging your skills and assessing if you are a fit. Probably looking for someone who would yes their decisions. I questioned their choice of tech during this which I think might have triggered intuition. Overall a positive interview in terms of questions asked and answers. But not so in terms of them coming back after it.

- Implement a DAG using Java from scratch - Questions about API and integration - The most frequently asked question though was the following What are you going to do, if you are into a situation where our existing development teams resist change and dont want to modernise or move forward. How you would handle this situation.
avatar

Principal Software Engineer

Interviewed at Nutmeg

3.6
Nov 9, 2020

- Implement a DAG using Java from scratch - Questions about API and integration - The most frequently asked question though was the following What are you going to do, if you are into a situation where our existing development teams resist change and dont want to modernise or move forward. How you would handle this situation.

Imagine you are looking at an X/Y plane top-down. Now imagine there is a camera at the origin (0,0). The camera has a FOV in degrees, and can rotate 360 degrees so that the FOV can include any X/Y point. Given the camera's FOV in degrees and a list of points, write an algorithm that will ensure the camera captures each point with minimal rotations.
Mar 21, 2024

Imagine you are looking at an X/Y plane top-down. Now imagine there is a camera at the origin (0,0). The camera has a FOV in degrees, and can rotate 360 degrees so that the FOV can include any X/Y point. Given the camera's FOV in degrees and a list of points, write an algorithm that will ensure the camera captures each point with minimal rotations.

Plenty of questions about my background, programming language constructs, engineering design scenarios, code/design critiques, etc. Several times, I felt challenged to ask questions as smart as the ones I was getting. The one-week Slack session was an all-around, "Let's see how you run with the pack" exercise. I can't imagine how a candidate could "fake it" through all of that.
avatar

Principal Software Engineer

Interviewed at SDVI

5
Jan 8, 2022

Plenty of questions about my background, programming language constructs, engineering design scenarios, code/design critiques, etc. Several times, I felt challenged to ask questions as smart as the ones I was getting. The one-week Slack session was an all-around, "Let's see how you run with the pack" exercise. I can't imagine how a candidate could "fake it" through all of that.

Viewing 821 - 830 interview questions

Glassdoor has 2,162 interview questions and reports from Principal software engineer interviews. Prepare for your interview. Get hired. Love your job.