Workday Software Engineer candidates report coding, design, hiring-manager, and behavioral conversations, with formats varying by team and role focus.
$170K
Avg. Base Comp
$211K
Avg. Total Comp
5 rounds
Typical Rounds
2-4 weeks
Process Length
Workday Software Engineer interviews reported here span coding, engineering design, and collaboration rather than one uniform loop. One candidate described a skills-focused sequence with a recruiter screen, a short live HackerRank coding segment within a technical or hiring-manager conversation, structured discussion of technical experience, a team-collaboration interview, and code pairing. Another reported a manager screen followed by technical, architecture, scenario-focused, and HR conversations.
For coding, prepare to explain your reasoning while implementing. Reported formats include moderate HackerRank-style problems, graph questions, online assessments, and practical backend exercises. Some candidates also encountered object-oriented questions or paired work in which class structure, testing, execution, and verification mattered alongside arriving at a solution. The exact format appears team-dependent.
Design preparation should be practical and concrete. Candidates have discussed object-oriented design, low-level design, system design, and the architecture of technology they previously worked on. Be ready to explain components and tradeoffs rather than only name patterns or tools.
Behavioral preparation matters throughout the reported experiences. Have examples of resolving disagreement, collaborating with teammates or stakeholders, solving an engineering problem, and discussing past projects. Several reports combine technical background with behavioral or scenario questions, while others use separate collaboration interviews. Treat these as preparation themes rather than a guaranteed sequence.
Synthesized from 16 candidate reports by our editorial team.
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Real interview reports from people who went through the Workday process.
The process felt organized and generally welcoming, although the technical portion was more demanding than I expected. It started with a manager screen, followed by a 45-minute conversation with the hiring manager and an engineer. They asked about my past experience, college projects, and a few simple questions tied to the team’s area. One question that stood out was why a particular college project was my favorite. The atmosphere was relaxed and not intimidating, so this round felt more like a discussion than an interrogation.
After that, I went through several technical and scenario-focused interviews. The coding rounds used HackerRank-style problems at a moderate level, with problem solving and implementation both evaluated. I was asked about graph algorithms, and the interviewers also paid attention to communication and how I approached the work, not just whether I reached an answer. The manager and behavioral discussions included situations such as handling disagreements with teammates and explaining what I would do in different work scenarios.
The deepest technical conversation asked me to walk through the architecture of technology I had worked on. I needed to explain the system clearly and reason about its design rather than simply describe the tools involved. The final stage included additional interviews focused on how I would react to and reason through different scenarios, plus an HR conversation. Overall, I received an offer. My main advice is to practice moderate HackerRank-style graph problems, prepare a clear architecture walkthrough for a system you know well, and have concrete examples ready for team-disagreement and judgment-based scenarios.
Prep tip from this candidate
Practice moderate HackerRank-style graph problems and be ready to explain the architecture of a technology you have worked on in depth. Also prepare a concrete example of how you handled disagreement with teammates and how you reason through workplace scenarios.
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Sourced from candidate reports and verified by our team.
Topics based on recent interview experiences.
Featured question at Workday
Given two sorted lists, write a function to merge them into one sorted list.
| Question | |
|---|---|
| Target Indices | |
| Median O(1) | |
| International e-Commerce Warehouse | |
| Stakeholder Communication | |
| Why Do You Want to Work With Us | |
| SFTP Pipeline | |
| 2nd Highest Salary | |
| Top Three Salaries | |
| Empty Neighborhoods | |
| Closest SAT Scores | |
| Subscription Overlap | |
| Monthly Customer Report | |
| Rolling Bank Transactions | |
| Prime to N | |
| Top 3 Users | |
| Random SQL Sample | |
| Comments Histogram | |
| Upsell Transactions | |
| Raining in Seattle | |
| String Shift | |
| Customer Orders | |
| Bagging vs Boosting | |
| Find the Missing Number | |
| Minimum Change | |
| Weighted Keys | |
| Find the First Non-Repeating Character in a String | |
| The Brackets Problem | |
| Scrambled Tickets | |
| Largest Salary by Department |
Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Candidates report either a recruiter conversation about background and role fit or an online assessment before later interviews. Assessment reports include timed coding and, in one campus process, aptitude, core CS, DSA, and SQL.
Candidates report medium-difficulty LeetCode or HackerRank-style coding, sometimes in a shared editor or paired format. Topics mentioned include strings, maps, trees, graphs, linked lists, and combinations; explaining the approach may be evaluated alongside implementation.
Technical discussions may cover low-level design, UML, class implementation, scalable-system design, or the architecture of prior work. Candidates report being asked to explain components, tradeoffs, and design reasoning clearly.
Candidates report hiring-manager and behavioral conversations about past projects, teamwork, disagreement, problem solving, and role fit. Some reports describe these as separate stages, while others combine technical background with behavioral questions.
Later stages may include code review or pairing, a company-values behavioral conversation, and HR discussion. One code-pairing account emphasized testing, execution, and object-oriented design while working through a problem aloud.
