DRW's Software Engineer interviews typically begin with a Codility or HackerRank coding assessment, followed by a recruiter screen, C++ and OS-focused technical rounds, and often a take-home project that reviewers scrutinize closely before any final-round decision.
$170K
Avg. Base Comp
$220K
Avg. Total Comp
Not reported
Typical Rounds
Not reported
Process Length
DRW's software engineer hiring process most often opens with a timed online coding assessment, administered through Codility or HackerRank rather than a generic LeetCode clone. One candidate solved three C++ questions: two algorithmic problems and a binary tree task. They found Codility more approachable than typical practice sites. A separate candidate who faced the HackerRank version described it as genuinely tough, saying the questions demanded solid C++ implementation skills and systems thinking rather than textbook algorithms. An intern candidate reported a proctored, two-and-a-half-hour Codility test with easy-to-medium problems, including a filtering-and-aggregation question about travel fees. They were rejected the next business day, a reminder that this screen is weighted heavily even when it feels manageable.
Early calls often focus on background and resume fit, though scheduling has been inconsistent. One applicant waited 30 minutes on Zoom before anyone joined a first call with a senior engineer. Another had an interviewer arrive 40 minutes late to a phone interview pitched at medium-hard LeetCode difficulty, where a working but non-optimal solution was not enough to advance. Later technical rounds lean on C++ fundamentals paired with operating-systems knowledge. One candidate was handed a lengthy problem statement in advance and then asked to implement a live solution while being observed. Format can also shift without warning. One candidate expected a conversation about prior roles at the hiring-manager stage but instead received a live Elixir coding round focused on concurrency, and recommends confirming the format of each stage ahead of time.
A take-home assignment appears in more than one report, including two separate accounts of building a Tetris-style engine. One candidate said a multi-hour submission was reviewed in about twenty minutes and returned with vague feedback. Another was later asked in a final-round interview to modify and defend their take-home code live. For candidates who reach the final stage, one report describes three back-to-back interviews: C++ fundamentals and computer science concepts, a live coding session, and a detailed walkthrough of the earlier take-home work.
Synthesized from 8 candidate reports by our editorial team.
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Real interview reports from people who went through the Drw process.
The process at DRW was intense and dragged on longer than I expected. I went through seven rounds total over almost three months, which felt excessive given how it ultimately played out. The interviews mixed behavioral questions with technical problem-solving, and I never felt like I had a clear sense of where I stood until very late in the game.
Early rounds included a take-home assignment and system design questions, which I prepped for pretty thoroughly. But then came the brain teasers and probabilistic reasoning questions—the kind that test how you think on your feet rather than just pattern matching to LeetCode. There were also deep dives into troubleshooting scenarios, which felt less like standard coding interviews and more like someone was genuinely trying to understand how I debug and reason through hard problems. I got asked about graph algorithms, merge sort, and some specific technical questions about previous projects I'd worked on. One memorable question involved a chessboard with rooks and walls, and another was about computing averages for a dice game—the kind of thing where the math matters more than the code.
The on-site was brutal. Almost four hours of back-to-back interviews with different team members. I thought it went well and got positive signals in the room, but after the final round I was told they wanted to interview one more candidate and would decide between us. Then silence. Weeks later, the recruiter told me they'd decided to pass on both of us and restart the search entirely. No feedback, no explanation of what I could improve. The whole thing required me to take half a day of PTO and consumed a ton of mental energy across three months, only to hit a wall with no learning from it.
Prep tip from this candidate
Expect behavioral and troubleshooting questions alongside technical problem-solving—study graph algorithms and probability-based problems (dice averages, conditional probability) rather than just standard LeetCode. The process is long; if they move to an on-site, prepare for a marathon day and ask for clear feedback after rejection.
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Sourced from candidate reports and verified by our team.
Topics based on recent interview experiences.
Featured question at Drw
Select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department
| Question | |
|---|---|
| Employee Salaries | |
| Merge Sorted Lists | |
| Subscription Overlap | |
| Closest SAT Scores | |
| Empty Neighborhoods | |
| Top Three Salaries | |
| Monthly Customer Report | |
| Rolling Bank Transactions | |
| Find the Missing Number | |
| Maximum Profit | |
| Bagging vs Boosting | |
| String Shift | |
| Prime to N | |
| Comments Histogram | |
| Top 5 Turnover Risk | |
| Like Tracker | |
| Find the First Non-Repeating Character in a String | |
| Size of Joins | |
| Total Spent on Products | |
| Google Maps Improvement | |
| Rectangle Overlap | |
| P-value to a Layman | |
| Cumulative Distribution | |
| Top 3 Users | |
| Over-Budget Projects | |
| Slacking Employees Salaries | |
| Hurdles In Data Projects | |
| Sum to N | |
| Over 100 Dollars |
Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Most reports describe a timed online assessment as the first stage, administered on Codility or HackerRank. One candidate solved three C++ questions on Codility, two algorithmic problems and a binary tree task, and called it more approachable than typical LeetCode-style platforms. Another candidate who faced the HackerRank version found it genuinely tough, saying the questions demanded solid C++ implementation skills and systems thinking rather than generic algorithm puzzles. A separate internship candidate described a proctored, two-and-a-half-hour Codility test with easy-to-medium problems, including a travel-fee filtering question, and was rejected the next business day. A different internship report described a roughly ninety-minute assessment open to any programming language that leaned toward memory-management concepts rather than pure algorithms.
After the assessment, one candidate had an HR screening call to establish fit, and another candidate's first call with a senior engineer covered their resume background. Scheduling has been inconsistent: that candidate waited 30 minutes on Zoom before anyone joined. Another candidate had an interviewer arrive 40 minutes late to a phone interview pitched at medium-hard LeetCode difficulty, where a working but non-optimal solution did not advance.
Technical interviews reported by candidates focus heavily on C++ fluency paired with operating-systems knowledge. One candidate was sent a lengthy problem statement ahead of time, given a moment to review it, and then asked to implement a solution live while being observed. The format isn't always predictable. One candidate expected a conversation about prior roles at what was framed as a hiring-manager stage, but instead received a live Elixir coding round focused on concurrency, a reminder to confirm the exact format of each stage in advance.
A take-home assignment shows up in multiple reports, including two separate accounts of building a Tetris-style engine. One candidate said hours of work on the submission were reviewed in about twenty minutes and returned with vague feedback that it 'didn't run the way ours does.' Another candidate's take-home resurfaced in a later final-round interview, where interviewers asked them to modify and defend the code live rather than simply discuss what was already submitted.
For candidates who reach this stage, one report describes a final round made up of three back-to-back interviews. The first covered C++ fundamentals and computer science concepts, the second was another live coding session, and the third was a detailed walkthrough of the earlier take-home assignment, where interviewers asked for on-the-spot changes to the submitted solution.
