Acing the Bloomberg L.P. Software Engineer Interview: The Insider’s Guide to Common Interview Questions

Interviewing for a software engineering role at Bloomberg L.P is an exciting opportunity As one of the world’s leading financial data and media companies, Bloomberg offers some of the most coveted and lucrative tech jobs around.

But landing a software engineering job at Bloomberg is no easy feat. The interview process is intense, with multiple rigorous rounds of technical and behavioral questions designed to thoroughly vet candidates.

As someone who has gone through the process and come out successful on the other side I want to share my insider tips to help you ace the Bloomberg software engineer interview. In this comprehensive guide I’ll cover

• An overview of the different interview rounds and types of questions asked
• The top technical coding and systems design questions to expect
• How to handle the behavioral and situational interview questions
• My top strategies for overall success in the Bloomberg interview process

Let’s dig in!

Overview of the Bloomberg Software Engineering Interview Process

Typically, the Bloomberg software engineering interview consists of three main stages:

1. Initial Phone Screen with the Recruiter

This is a short 30 minute call focused on assessing your interest in Bloomberg, your reason for looking to make a change, your salary expectations, and confirming your technical background. Expect questions like:

• Walk me through your current role and technical experience.
• Why are you looking to leave your current company?
• What interests you about this role at Bloomberg?
• What are your salary expectations?

2. Technical Phone/Video Screen

Next up is a 60-90 minute technical screen, usually conducted over phone or Zoom. The interviewer will ask you 1-2 algorithmic coding challenges to test your skills in data structures, algorithms, and analytical thinking. Expect questions like:

• Given a sorted array, write a function to find a given target value.
• Implement a queue data structure using stacks.
• Find the nth node from the end in a linked list.

Be sure to communicate your thought process clearly and optimize for correctness over speed.

3. On-site Interview

If you pass the coding screen, you’ll be invited for a full day of 4-6 on-site interviews. This includes more coding rounds, systems design, and behavioral/situational interviews.

• Coding: You’ll be asked to write algorithms on a whiteboard or IDE like PyCharm. The questions get harder as the day goes on.

• System Design: Be ready to design large-scale distributed systems like a web crawler or stock trading platform. Understand how to build for scalability and reliability.

• Behavioral: Questions about your leadership style, times you overcame challenges, how you work on a team, etc.

Now let’s look at some of the actual technical and behavioral interview questions to expect.

Top Technical Interview Questions at Bloomberg

The technical interview questions will focus heavily on coding algorithms and data structures, as well as designing large-scale systems. Here are some of the most common questions I’ve seen:

Coding Interview Questions

• Reverse a linked list iteratively and recursively.
• Find duplicate numbers in an array.
• Given a binary tree, check if it is a binary search tree.
• Implement a hash map data structure.
• Find all anagrams in a string.
• Merge two sorted arrays.
• Given a matrix, rotate it 90 degrees clockwise.
• Reverse the words in a sentence.

Make sure you have mastered core computer science fundamentals like arrays, strings, trees, graphs, sorting, searching, dynamic programming, etc.

Practice implementing classic algorithms like breadth-first search, depth-first search, Djikstra’s algorithm. Study up on time and space complexity analysis.

Systems Design Interview Questions

Here are some common systems design topics and example questions:

• Design a web crawler: Extract the core objects, use cases, and work flows. Handle duplicates, prioritize fresh content, deal with changing content.

• Design Facebook’s newsfeed system: Requirements of feeds, fan-out architecture, caching, databases for storage, push vs pull delivery.

• Design a stock trading system: Functional requirements, latency, throughput, reliability. Components like order matching engine, risk management, position management.

Really understand distributed systems concepts like load balancing, databases, caching, microservices, horizontal scaling, etc.

Focus your preparation on designing scalable systems under constraints like low latency, high availability, consistency, and reliability. Use design patterns like load balancers, databases, caches to handle scale. Consider trade-offs.

Behavioral and Situational Interview Questions

Alongside technical skills, Bloomberg wants to understand your leadership potential, communication abilities, and problem-solving approach. Some sample questions:

• Tell me about a time you faced a challenging situation on a team. How did you handle it?
• Describe a technical project that you are proud of. What was your contribution?
• How do you respond to tight deadlines and potential delays?
• Tell me about a disagreement you had with a coworker. How was it resolved?
• Why do you want to work at Bloomberg specifically?

Use the STAR method (Situation – Task – Action – Result) to structure your answers. Provide specific examples demonstrating analytical thinking, teamwork, and resilience when faced with challenges.

Convey your passion for technology and interest in the financial domain. Show how you thrive in fast-paced environments like Bloomberg.

My Top Bloomberg Interview Prep Tips

With practice coding questions, design interview study, and STAR stories ready, here are my top tips for interview success:

• Start preparing early – Bloomberg questions are hard. Give yourself 8-12 weeks to deeply learn concepts.

• Practice aloud – Verbalize your approach before coding. Communicate constantly during design questions.

• Master the fundamentals – Ensure you have arrays, strings, trees, graphs, sorting, etc. down cold. Know core design patterns like load balancing, caching, databases.

• Do mock interviews – Practice answering real Bloomberg questions asked by experts. Get feedback to improve.

• Review basics before on-site – Quickly revise algorithms, data structures, design patterns right before. Stay sharp!

• Be confident – You’ve put in the work. Believe in yourself and your abilities.

Are You Ready to Join Bloomberg?

Well, that wraps up my inside guide on how to crush the interviews and land your dream software engineering role at Bloomberg. With diligent practice on algorithms, system design, and behavioral questions, you’ll be ready to tackle anything they throw at you!

Remember to focus on the fundamentals, practice frequently, and believe in yourself. Before you know it, you’ll be writing world-class financial code at one of the top technology companies out there.

You’ve got this! Now get out there, ace those interviews, and go change the world with your code. The Bloomberg engineering team awaits bright minds like you.