Technical Interview (Coding)

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All candidates will go through a technical interview that is a one-hour pair programming session with one of our software developers. The basic format of the interview will be:

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  • Introductions

  • Discussion of a technical project in a previous role (10-15 minutes)

    • Please come prepared to talk about a technically complex or challenging project that you've worked on that required choosing between multiple implementations.

  • Pair Programming Exercise (30-45 minutes)

    • Basic Overview: This interview is meant to mimic coding in the real world. You'll be asked a series of questions and work with the interviewer to solve them. Feel free to Google for random syntax or ask the interviewer for help on small parts as you go. We are looking to set candidates up for success -- for example, if the interviewer sees a small mistake like a missing semicolon that you're not seeing, they'll help point it out. In general, they are a sounding board and partner in the solve, and you won't be penalized for small mistakes or not knowing an obscure piece of syntax by heart.

    • The problem: The interview questions will be a series of questions that involve working to build out a solution to a problem using the most basic data structures (lists, dictionaries, sets). Don't worry about reading up on things like red/black trees or sorting algorithms - the goal is to mimic the kind of code thinking we do day-to-day, not do a computer science exam.

    • Language choice: You can use any coding language. We're assuming whatever language you're choosing is your best foot forward, so choose whatever language you are most comfortable in -- our stack is Python + Typescript, but you truly won't be penalized at all for choosing something else.

    • Coding Environment: We will be using coderpad.io for the pairing session, which lets you code in any language you want with syntax highlighting and lets you run the code on the spot. You will be sent a link to use during the interview. If you've never used coderpad before, you can make a free trial account and play around with the environment before the interview.

    • Talking through the solution: Please talk through your thought process as you go, but as with normal pair programming, if you need to take two or three minutes to just focus or think through an approach without talking, please feel free to do so.

  • Open time for candidate questions about Thyme Care

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Any other questions before the interview begins? Reach out to your recruiter before the interview and ask. We can't tell you the exact questions we'll be asking, but other than that, nothing should be a surprise.

 
 

Technical Interview (Architecture)

The second technical interview will be either be an architecture interview with one or two of our software developers, or a second pair programming interview, depending on the role. Your recruiter can tell you which one you should expect. The basic format of the interview will be:

  • Introductions

  • Discussion of working on engineering teams (10-15 minutes)

    • We will be asking questions about experiences on engineering teams, asking about things like mentorship, inclusivity, and ways of working together and resolving disagreements.

  • 1) Pair Architecture Exercise (30-45 minutes)

    • Basic Overview: This interview is meant to mimic architecture design in the real world. You'll be given a small problem statement to start with, and then work on talking through what an architecture might look like with the interviewer. As you talk through the solution, you'll be asked to dive into the implications of various choices or dive into more details. This interview will not involve coding.

    • Topics: You should be prepared to talk about the various aspects of building a production system. This involves both abstract topics like monitoring and alerting, and more concrete topics like how you would deploy an application (e.g. server vs. containers vs. serverless/lambdas). You don't need to know specific names of cloud provider services, but knowing the common kinds of services available would be helpful. We're going to cover a lot of surface area, so we don't expect expertise across the whole interview. If you haven't worked on a specific part of production services before, feel free to say so.

    • Ambiguity: If you have any questions about various constraints or ambiguity in the problem, always feel free to ask. If the answer doesn't matter much, the interviewer will likely tell you to choose either option and go with it.

  • 2) (or) Pair Programming Exercise (30-45 minutes)

    • This interview will follow the same format the one described at the top of this page.

  • Open time for candidate questions about Thyme Care

Any other questions before the interview begins? Reach out to your recruiter before the interview and ask. We can't tell you the exact questions we'll be asking, but other than that, nothing should be a surprise.