Samsara Software Engineer interviews typically run 4-5 rounds, starting with a recruiter screen and online coding assessment, then moving into live coding, practical system design, and behavioral rounds with the hiring manager.
$134K
Avg. Base Comp
$251K
Avg. Total Comp
4-5 rounds
Typical Rounds
Not reported
Process Length
Samsara's Software Engineer interviews generally begin with a recruiter screen, and many candidates report an online coding assessment on platforms like CoderPad or HackerRank before any live interviews start. From there, the process typically moves into a technical phone screen or coding round, followed by a virtual onsite that includes a system design conversation, a behavioral or hiring-manager round, and sometimes a second technical session.
One of the more useful, evidence-specific signals is that a Markdown-to-HTML string-parsing coding exercise shows up across multiple independent reports — candidates describe it as less of a classic LeetCode problem and more about handling edge cases in real, messy input, with interviewers sometimes layering on new constraints mid-round. System design prompts also skew practical rather than textbook: candidates have been asked to design a remote smart-bulb control system, a payment-processing service that must reconcile with GPS location data, and a matrix-based pattern-recognition problem. Interviewers reportedly reward candidates who explain their reasoning and adapt to feedback over those who simply produce a correct answer quickly.
Behavioral rounds tend to focus on ownership, learning, and handling conflict, and several candidates who received offers highlighted attentive recruiters who gave prep guidance between rounds. The experience is not perfectly uniform — some candidates describe a tight four-round loop, while others go through multiple hiring-manager conversations and even VP-level fit interviews, so it's worth confirming your specific loop with the recruiter early on.
Synthesized from 38 candidate reports by our editorial team.
Had an interview recently?
Share your experience. Unlock the full guide.
Real interview reports from people who went through the Samsara process.
The whole process felt disorganized from the start. I was told I could begin immediately, which aligned with what I wanted, but then internal delays kept pushing things back. When those delays conflicted with leave I'd already planned, I offered to be flexible — surely a remote-first company could work around that. Instead, I got rejected for not being able to start on their timeline, despite the fact that they were the ones who'd caused the delay in the first place.
The actual interviews were mixed. The initial recruiter screen was straightforward, and they mentioned they weren't constrained by headcount, so they were happy to give me a week to prepare for the technical round. That was nice. The technical interview itself included a medium-difficulty LeetCode-style problem, which felt reasonable. Then came the hiring manager conversation — it was surprisingly casual, almost conversational. They asked things like whether I saw myself as an independent contributor and how I'd spend my first two weeks ramping up. It didn't feel like a typical technical gauntlet; more like a chat with some behavioral questions mixed in. No heavy pressure, which I appreciated.
But here's where it fell apart. After the hiring manager call, I got a rejection email citing availability as the reason. That made no sense given everything I'd offered and the flexibility they'd claimed to have. When I'd raised concerns about the salary — which was genuinely below London market rates — the recruiter had encouraged me to keep going anyway. Then rejection. It felt like the left hand had no idea what the right hand was doing. The whole experience left a bad taste; not because I didn't get the offer, but because of the lack of basic alignment and professionalism in how they handled the process.
Prep tip from this candidate
If hired-for availability becomes a negotiation point, get explicit confirmation in writing about start date flexibility before proceeding to technical rounds — this company's internal misalignment cost the candidate days of prep time and a false rejection reason.
Share your own interview experience to unlock all reports, or subscribe for full access.
Sourced from candidate reports and verified by our team.
Topics based on recent interview experiences.
Featured question at Samsara
Given two sorted lists, write a function to merge them into one sorted list.
| Question | |
|---|---|
| Hurdles In Data Projects | |
| CSV Ingestion Pipeline | |
| Deciding Between Solutions | |
| Client Solution Pushback | |
| Using APIs for Downstream Tasks | |
| 2nd Highest Salary | |
| Empty Neighborhoods | |
| Top Three Salaries | |
| Closest SAT Scores | |
| Subscription Overlap | |
| Monthly Customer Report | |
| Random SQL Sample | |
| String Shift | |
| Rolling Bank Transactions | |
| Top 3 Users | |
| Raining in Seattle | |
| Customer Orders | |
| Comments Histogram | |
| Find the First Non-Repeating Character in a String | |
| Minimum Change | |
| Level Of Rain Water In 2D Terrain | |
| Flight Records | |
| Prime to N | |
| Download Facts | |
| Upsell Transactions | |
| Bagging vs Boosting | |
| Daily Retention Summary | |
| First Touch Attribution | |
| P-value to a Layman |
Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Most candidates start with a recruiter phone or video screen focused on background, motivation for joining Samsara, and the technologies you've used. Several candidates report this stage takes about 30 minutes and describe it as friendly and low-pressure, though at least one candidate found the recruiter unprepared to describe the team's tech stack or role scope, so it may be worth asking clarifying questions about the team early.
Many Software Engineer candidates report an online coding assessment before any live interviews, typically on CoderPad or HackerRank, with problems ranging from easy to medium difficulty and sometimes covering multiple languages such as Java, Python, Node.js, and React. Candidates describe correctness and a working solution as more important than achieving optimal efficiency at this stage.
The core technical round is frequently a live coding exercise rather than a pure algorithm problem — multiple candidates independently describe a Markdown-to-HTML string-parsing task, and others report string-manipulation or CLI-argument-parsing problems where the interviewer adds new requirements as you go. Interviewers reportedly value testing code incrementally and explaining trade-offs; one candidate was marked down for writing the full solution before running it.
System design questions candidates report tend to be practical rather than generic scaling scenarios, including designing a remote smart-bulb control system and a payment system that reconciles credit-card charges against GPS location data. Interviewers reportedly probe well beyond a high-level architecture, expecting you to explain and defend the underlying technology choices.
The later stage is usually a set of behavioral and hiring-manager conversations, sometimes stretching into a virtual onsite with several back-to-back rounds in one day. Candidates report questions about ownership of a project, handling interpersonal conflict, and what you're currently learning; some processes add a second manager or VP-level conversation to confirm culture and role fit before an offer is extended.
