How we interview · Software engineer

    Hire software engineers, interviewed by engineers

    Backend, frontend, full-stack and mobile engineers from mid-level to principal. Every candidate has a 60-minute technical interview with an engineer before you meet them.

    A software engineer's CV lists languages and frameworks. What it can't tell you is whether they can read an unfamiliar codebase, design something that survives real traffic, or find the bug at 2 a.m. That's what the first technical round is for, and it's the round we run for you.

    We hire engineers who build product: APIs and services, web front ends, mobile apps and the glue between them. AlgoSmiths builds software every day, so the person interviewing your candidate does the same kind of work.

    What they work on: Node.js, Python, Java, Go, React, Next.js, React Native and Flutter, on AWS, GCP or Azure.

    When to hire one

    • Your roadmap is blocked on engineering capacity, not ideas.
    • You need someone senior enough to own a system, not just tickets.
    • Your own engineers are spending their week on first-round interviews.

    What we assess in software engineers

    Every report also covers impact, judgement, how they raise the team and how they work with others.

    Craft

    Code fluency
    Readable, tested code; simplifies rather than adds; reuses what exists.
    Design
    Clear boundaries between components, sensible data models, APIs others can use.
    Architecture
    How the pieces fit, roll out safely and get monitored. Deeper for senior and above.
    Debugging
    Narrows a problem down methodically using logs, tests and reasoning, not guesswork.
    Technical strategy
    For staff and above: aligning a team's choices with where the product is going.

    How we recommend a level

    Mid-level
    Ships well-scoped features with tests and clean pull requests, with light guidance.
    Senior
    Owns a service or product area end to end: design, rollout, monitoring and the incidents.
    Staff / lead
    Leads designs that span teams, unblocks others and keeps the architecture coherent.
    Principal
    Sets technical direction and takes on the problems that decide the company's next few years.

    The 60-minute interview

    Warm-up (10 min)
    A project they're proud of: what they owned, what went wrong, what they'd change.
    Hands-on (25 min)
    Change or extend a small, realistic codebase in their main language, thinking aloud.
    Design (20 min)
    Design a service for a believable scenario, such as orders or notifications, and defend the trade-offs.
    Their questions (5 min)
    What they ask tells us what they care about.

    Red flags we screen for

    • Can describe a framework but not why they chose it.
    • Jumps to code before understanding the problem.
    • Every past failure was someone else's fault.

    What you receive for each shortlisted candidate:

    Candidate R.K.

    Senior Backend Engineer · 60-minute technical interview

    Sample report
    Tested
    API design for an order service, debugging a failing integration test, and the trade-off between a SQL write and a queue.
    Strong
    Clear data modelling. Wrote tests without being asked. Explained idempotency well.
    Gaps
    Little production experience with message queues. Vague on observability.
    Level
    Senior, with confidence. Not yet staff.
    Probe next
    An incident they owned end to end, and how they would add tracing to this service.
    RecommendationShortlist
    A sample interview report. The candidate is fictional; the format is the one clients receive.

    Questions about hiring software engineers

    Yes: backend, frontend, full-stack and mobile (React Native, Flutter and native). Each candidate is interviewed by a panel engineer who works in a similar stack.

    First interviewed profiles usually reach you within a few days of the brief, and selection through your own rounds takes about two weeks. Joining then depends on the candidate's notice period, which in India is often 30 to 90 days.

    A percentage of the hire's annual CTC, set by seniority and paid only when the candidate joins. There's no retainer and no fee if nobody joins.

    Yes. With our Interviews only service you send the candidates and we run the technical round and write the report.

    Other engineering roles we hire

    Hiring on your own terms? Permanent hiring, contract hires or interviews only.

    Tell us the role.

    Four details and we'll come back within a working day with how we'd approach it.

    No retainer. You pay only when someone joins. Or write to talent@algosmiths.com