Bloomberg Software Engineer candidates describe a technical screen, several coding rounds with deep follow-ups, resume and "why Bloomberg" conversations, and sometimes a system design round before a manager conversation.
$173K
Avg. Base Comp
$212K
Avg. Total Comp
5 rounds
Typical Rounds
Not reported
Process Length
Candidates who interviewed for Bloomberg's Software Engineer role describe a loop dominated by LeetCode-style coding. The follow-up questions that extend the original problem do much of the filtering. Reported problems include:
Several candidates describe the difficulty as medium to hard, mainly because of time pressure and having to defend tradeoffs aloud. One interviewer pressed on the difference between ordered and unordered hash maps, so know how core data structures work, not just how to use them.
Expect resume and project discussion as well. Candidates were asked how they tested a full-stack project, about a conflict with a coworker, about a technical challenge they handled, and about their weakest skill. A "Why Bloomberg?" question also comes up, along with a comparison of working at a startup versus a big company.
The shape of the loop varies. Some candidates report a recruiter or HackerRank-style screen, then a superday of technical interviews, an HR conversation, and an engineering manager round. Another candidate had only two coding interviews before being rejected. A few candidates mention design-style prompts: a URL shortener, a single-user stock portfolio, a news alerting system, and data consistency during a canary deployment between new and legacy systems.
Practice writing correct code quickly, walking through it by hand, and explaining why you chose one approach over another. At least one interviewer checked the logic by reading the code rather than running it. Every account in this set ended without an offer, so treat the specifics as individual experiences rather than a fixed format.
Synthesized from 76 candidate reports by our editorial team.
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Real interview reports from people who went through the Bloomberg Lp process.
My second-round interview at Bloomberg was supposed to be 75 minutes covering both DSA and System Design. Two interviewers showed up—one of them started by asking me which college I went to, which felt completely out of place given I have over seven years of experience. He then went on a deep dive into my resume, pressing me for specific metrics I couldn't always recall. By the time we got to the actual design problem—an e-commerce system—nearly 40 minutes had already elapsed. I outlined the bare minimum requirements to scope the work, but he kept insisting that e-commerce "does so much more," without specifying what to include. So I spent another ten minutes listing out seller onboarding, seller dues settlement, last-mile delivery, notifications, and more. That left me with barely ten minutes to actually design the architecture. He asked me to draw the entire system and then dive deep, which is impossible in that timeframe. When I questioned why we needed BFF layers, he had this dismissive attitude. The other interviewer then abruptly cut us off for time. No DSA was actually coded, the system design was nowhere near complete, and there was nothing substantive for them to evaluate. I'm pretty certain I'll be rejected. My suspicion is they'd already found their candidate and were just going through motions; the new interviewer who'd only been at the company two months probably didn't know how to structure a proper senior-level interview.
Prep tip from this candidate
If an interviewer starts expanding scope mid-interview without clear boundaries, take ownership and push back: "Given our time constraints, should we focus the design on just order management for now?" That keeps the problem tractable and lets you demonstrate depth rather than breadth. Also, expect resume deep-dives at Bloomberg—be ready with specific numbers and outcomes from your past projects.
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Sourced from candidate reports and verified by our team.
Topics based on recent interview experiences.
Featured question at Bloomberg Lp
Write a query to return whether each user's subscription date range overlaps with any other completed subscription
| Question | |
|---|---|
| Merge Sorted Lists | |
| Google Maps Improvement | |
| Longest Increasing Subsequence | |
| Most Repetition | |
| Hurdles In Data Projects | |
| Median O(1) | |
| Messenger Service Design | |
| Target Value Search | |
| Filling Supermarket Bag | |
| Binary Tree Validation | |
| Check Matching Parentheses | |
| Moving Window | |
| Inherited Model Evaluation | |
| 5th Largest Number | |
| News Alert Latency | |
| Pathfinder in Maze | |
| Blob Indexing | |
| Impossibly Iterative Fibonacci | |
| Minimum Days for Scheduling All Meetings | |
| Shortest Path Algorithms | |
| Summing Numeric Strings | |
| Client Solution Pushback | |
| Why Do You Want to Work With Us | |
| Minimum Parking Spots | |
| Your Strengths and Weaknesses | |
| LRU Cache 1 | |
| Prime to N | |
| Top 3 Users | |
| Find the Missing Number |
Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Candidates report starting with a recruiter call or a technical screen. Reported screens include two medium problems in about 40 minutes, and a 60-minute HackerRank-style interview. One screen also included a short introduction and a "Why Bloomberg?" conversation.
Most reports describe several coding interviews, sometimes back to back or in a superday. Questions included trees, BFS, islands, meeting rooms, linked lists and sliding window problems. Interviewers may keep extending a solution, ask about naive versus optimal approaches, or probe implementation details such as how hash maps work.
Candidates report project deep dives inside technical rounds as well as separate HR-style conversations. Reported prompts include how a project was tested, a conflict with a coworker, a startup versus big-company comparison, and why Bloomberg. Prepare specific answers tied to your past work and to Bloomberg's products.
Some candidates report a design-style round. Prompts included a URL shortener, a single-user stock portfolio, a news alerting system, inverted versus normal indexing, and data consistency during a canary deployment. This round does not appear in every report, so prepare for it as a possibility.
Several candidates mention a final conversation with an engineering manager, senior engineering manager or team lead. Reports describe a resume and project discussion and a question about how to make a system better. None of the accounts in this set ended with an offer.
