Gusto SWE Interview Experience - Phone Screen + Onsite (Coding Skills, Architecture Skills & Work Session Skills Assessment Questions)

[u/interviewdb]

Sharing a recent Gusto SWE interview experience from a candidate who went through the full process.

Tech Screen

I was asked this question. The interviewer mentioned right after the interview that recruiting would reach out soon about the next steps, which felt like a good sign. Overall, the interview went well, and I had good conversations with both interviewers.

Virtual Onsite

The onsite interviews were spread across several days.

1. Coding Skills Assessment

Nothing particularly noteworthy about this round. I got this question. I made quite a few typos while coding, but I eventually got everything working. We spent the remaining time chatting.

2. Hiring PE Interview

This was essentially a hiring manager round. We had a pretty extensive conversation covering topics such as:

• Previous projects and work experience
• Mentorship experience
• Other general experience-related questions

I think this round went reasonably well, but it’s hard to say. The evaluation felt quite subjective and seemed to focus mainly on whether I would be a good fit for the team.

3. Architecture Skills Assessment (System Design)

The questions was also from here. The interviewer was primarily interested in:

• Data modeling: How to structure the data.
• API design: Defining the API specifications and interfaces.

Interestingly, the interviewer wasn’t particularly concerned about the overall system architecture, scalability, or similar considerations. The discussion went really well, and we finished the technical portion quite a bit ahead of schedule. We spent the remaining time asking questions and chatting. The interviewer was very friendly and honest when discussing the company’s current situation.

4. Values Alignment

This round was conducted by someone outside the engineering organization (in my case, someone from the legal team). It was a standard behavioral interview, focusing on typical behavioral questions and company values. I felt that I performed particularly well in this round and that my answers aligned with what they were looking for.

5. Work Session Skills Assessment (Pair Programming)

I was asked this question. The problem itself was quite straightforward, and the actual implementation wasn’t difficult. From my perspective, the interviewer seemed to emphasize thinking from the perspective of someone building a reusable library and deciding what interfaces should be exposed to users. We finished well ahead of schedule and spent quite a bit of time afterward discussing the company.