Interviewing for a software engineering role at Twitter can feel incredibly daunting As one of the biggest and most influential social media platforms in the world, Twitter only accepts the cream of the crop The interview process is designed to rigorously assess a candidate’s technical proficiency, problem-solving skills, and ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment.
However with the right preparation and insight into what to expect you can enter your Twitter interview with confidence. This comprehensive guide will equip you with the knowledge needed to shine throughout the software engineering interview process and land your dream job at Twitter.
Understanding Twitter’s Software Engineering Interview Format
Typically, the Twitter software engineering interview comprises of 3 to 5 rounds:
-
Coding Challenge – You will be sent a coding challenge to complete either on a shared doc or IDE. This assesses your programming abilities.
-
Technical Phone Screen – A 45-60 minute call with an engineer, involving algorithm questions and broader discussions about previous projects and technical experience.
-
On-site Interview – If you successfully pass the phone screen, you will be invited to Twitter’s headquarters. This is a full day event with 4-6 rounds including coding, system design, behavioral, and leadership interviews.
-
Final Round – The last step is usually a final call with a Director/VP-level engineer. This focuses more on leadership skills and cultural fit.
Understanding the format means you can tailor your preparation accordingly. The on-site round, for instance, requires broader skills than just coding proficiency. Let’s look at how to prepare for the various interview types.
25 Common Twitter Software Engineering Interview Questions
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions across the different interview rounds:
Coding Questions
-
Reverse a linked list – This tests your fundamentals in data structures and algorithms. Be ready to code this out efficiently.
-
Find duplicate elements in an array – Another common algorithm question assessing your proficiency with arrays. Know multiple solutions e.g. hash tables.
-
Implement a LRU cache – Questions on caches test your system design abilities. Understand cache policies like LRU and be able to code them.
-
Design Twitter search – Expect system design questions like this that are open-ended and test your technical depth.
-
Serialization and deserialization of a tree – Twitter uses serialization heavily. Ensure you can tackle related questions confidently.
Technical Experience
-
Experience with scaled distributed systems – Be ready to discuss projects where you worked on large-scale distributed architectures and the challenges faced.
-
Real-time data stream processing – Have examples ready that highlight your experience processing and analyzing real-time data at scale.
-
Troubleshooting complex issues – Interviewers want to know how you debug and resolve tricky technical issues methodically. Relate real scenarios.
-
Machine learning applications – Have ML projects in your portfolio you can discuss in-depth given Twitter’s heavy ML usage.
-
Mobile app development – With over 70% mobile users, your experience building mobile apps is highly relevant. Discuss projects that showcase this expertise.
Leadership and Behavioral
-
Ambiguity tolerance – Twitter operates in a constantly changing landscape. Discuss how you stay productive amidst uncertainty.
-
Failure lessons – Interviewers look for how you handle and learn from failures. Pick an insightful example.
-
Conflict resolution – Give examples of resolving tensions or disagreements with logical thinking and empathy.
-
Diversity and inclusion – Share how you foster diversity and make underrepresented voices heard. Use real anecdotes.
-
Product sense – For senior roles, they assess your product intuition. Discuss instances of shipping winning products.
Twitter Specific
-
Improving Twitter’s scaling – Demonstrate how you would enhance performance and scalability, especially during peak loads.
-
Leveraging Twitter’s API – Show in-depth understanding of their API rules and how you would use it to improve user experience.
-
Combating misinformation – Discuss ideas on how you would leverage technology to address misinformation on the platform.
-
Enhancing analytics – Share how you would apply your data analytics skills to derive actionable insights for Twitter.
-
Staying relevant – Propose innovative product ideas that would keep Twitter competitive based on technological trends.
How to Prepare for the Twitter Software Engineering Interview
With an understanding of the interview format and common questions, let’s look at some proven strategies to prepare effectively.
Study Computer Science Fundamentals
Brush up core CS concepts like data structures, algorithms, databases, and networking. Many questions test these fundamentals, so solidify your basics. Work through LeetCode problems and read recent CS papers to sharpen up.
Practice Mock Interviews
Actively practice mock interviews focused on Twitter. Get a peer to conduct practice sessions or use online services. Treat them like real interviews and request detailed feedback on strengths and weaknesses.
Deep Dive into Twitter’s Technology
Understand Twitter’s tech stack in depth, especially unique elements like Tweebo and Murder. Study their architecture, dig into engineering blogs, and understand product roadmaps. This shows your passion.
Craft Your Project Narratives
Revisit complex projects you’ve worked on and craft compelling narratives. Quantify accomplishments with metrics. Prepare STAR stories highlighting your capabilities tied to Twitter’s needs.
Research Your Interviewers
Use LinkedIn to identify who you will be interviewing with. Study their background – this provides conversational fodder and helps frame your responses suitably.
Rest Up and Timebox Questions
Get good rest the night before your interview. During the interview, timebox questions and move on if stuck. Don’t let one question derail your entire interview.
Preparing for a Twitter software engineering interview takes time and dedication. But with the right approach, you can put your best foot forward and have engaging conversations that highlight your skills. Use this guide as a blueprint to develop targeted strategies based on the specific role. With rigorous preparation and practice, you will be set up for success in your journey to becoming a Twitter software engineer. Best of luck!
The role of a Twitter Software Engineer
Twitter is an American social networking and microblogging site where people post and respond to messages called “tweets.” 353 million people used Twitter every month in 2021, making it one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
As an internet technology company, Twitter depends on its software engineers to keep making the platform better so that users have a better experience and are happy with it.
Role and responsibility
- Work cross-functionally with committed teammates to build features on twitter.com.
- You will need to know a lot about modern web frameworks and APIs, like React, Redux, React Router, GraphQL, and Webpack, in order to create solutions for media playback and conversational mechanics that work on all devices and platforms. This is a unique challenge in web development.
- Take part in design and code reviews to build strong skills and best practices within and outside the team.
- Take an active role in team processes, and product decisions. You’ll be doing more than just writing code. For example, you’ll use data and user feedback to help set priorities and be in charge of a feature from start to finish.
- Take part in our culture of learning by taking advantage of chances to learn from Twitter’s community of web engineers, designers, and product managers and by showing us what you’re good at.
Skills/qualifications required
- B. S. or higher in computer science, or 4 years of work experience in a related field
- Very good at building websites and very familiar with new web frameworks and APIs, like React and Redux.
- Experience in designing and building customer facing Progressive Web App(s)
- Having worked as a tech lead or architect before and been able to set the team’s technical direction
- Worked in teams with people from different departments, such as product management, design, and infrastructure
- Experience in designing and delivering reliable, efficient software and systems.
Twitter Software Engineer salary
- Entry-level salary : USD 191,000
- Senior positions : USD 719,000.
- Median salary: USD 253,000, with USD 164,000 in base pay, USD 64,000 in stock pay, and USD 25,000 in bonus pay.
Twitter Software Engineer Interview Guide
There are three parts to the Twitter Software Engineer interview process: the phone screen, the technical screen, and the in-person round.
LAUNCH your dream career!
Talk to a coach from your target company for:
The Phone screen is a 45-minute telephonic interview with the recruiter. Here, the recruiter asks questions related to your CV and work experience, if any. The main goal of this exercise is to see how motivated the candidate is for the job and to see if he or she is a good fit for the company and the job. People who are just out of college should be very careful with their CV and any projects or internships they may have had while they were there.
Most asked interview questions in the Initial Screen.
- What made you decide to become a software engineer?
- Why Twitter?
The technical screen is a one-hour interview with the hiring manager and a Twitter software engineer. This round is aimed at assessing your technical skills in the following areas:
Coding
There will be questions on the technical screen that test the candidate’s general programming skills in the “coding aptitude” section. The focus will primarily be on object-oriented programming. Students need to be proficient in at least one of the programming languages among C++, Java, and Python. Typically, the interviewer asks 2-3 coding questions that need to be attempted through a shared online code editor.
System Design
Systems design includes things like system architecture, product design, modules, interfaces, and data that a system needs to meet certain needs. Companies like Twitter are looking for people who are good at system design to help them solve real problems by putting what they think they know to use. The interviewer may ask questions on front-end design, back-end design, scalability, and more in this section.
Most commonly asked Coding questions in the Technical screen:
- Give a list of integers as input, and make a new list where each item at index i is the product of all the numbers in the first list except the one at i.
- If you are given an array a[] and a number p, you need to write a function that counts how many times p appears in a[].
- Here’s the code to add an item to the middle of a linked list:
- You can turn a sorted list into a binary search tree by writing a function.
Most commonly asked System Design questions
- You have n threads, and each one will send out a message or object that has properties, one of which is the timestamp. Based on the time the message arrived, you now need to handle it. How would you design this system?.
- Design the Redbus payment system.
- Design a recommendation system.
- Create a system that can receive a lot of data, like readings from electricity meters, in a certain format and then combine it. This information is sent in any format and by any method, such as HTTP, FTP, etc., from different tenants.
- Can you design a movie ticket reservation system?
- Tell me how you would make a chat app like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.
- Tell me how you would handle versioning of Web Services APIs.
- When would you want two systems to talk to each other without being at the same time?
Twitter system design mock interview (with Senior Software Engineer)
FAQ
Is it hard to get a job at Twitter?
How long is a twitter interview?
What kind of questions are asked in tech interview?
How do you answer a software engineer interview question?
A software engineer interview (even a nontechnical one) wouldn’t be complete without an overview of your programming languages and proficiency. The interviewer just wants a sense of how many languages you know and if any align with the languages commonly used for programming within the company. There are no tricks to answering this question.
What is a senior software engineer interview question?
In a senior software engineer interview, you might encounter a question like this: What is a question that might be asked in a senior software engineer interview to discover what you’ve learned from your experiences and how you may use that to add value to the company? Feel free to talk about the high-level objective the project addressed.
How to prepare for software engineering interviews?
To prepare effectively for software engineering interviews, start by researching the company and the role. Begin with a thorough reading of the job description.
What questions should you ask a software engineer?
When interviewing a software engineer, it’s important to ask both behavioral and technical questions. Behavioral questions help your interviewer understand who you are as a person, including your motivations, personal process, and skills. Technical questions are designed to gauge your understanding of and proficiency with the principles of software engineering. For example, you might ask, ‘Why do you want to be a software engineer?’
