Barclays Software Engineer candidates report an online assessment followed by two to three interview stages. Preparation commonly centers on resume projects, coding fundamentals, Java or databases, and behavioral examples.
$153K
Avg. Base Comp
$200K
Avg. Total Comp
2-3 rounds
Typical Rounds
2-4 weeks
Process Length
Barclays Software Engineer candidates describe online assessments and live interviews, although the exact format varies. Reports include coding with multiple-choice questions or behavioral and personality-style questions. One candidate completed an onsite with separate behavioral and technical interviews, while others described two live rounds mixing technical, behavioral, or leadership content. Prepare for a detailed explanation of your own project decisions, because resume-based follow-ups recur across the accounts.
Technical emphasis is broad rather than uniform. Reported material includes Two Sum using a hash map, arrays and linked lists, dynamic programming, SQL and database fundamentals, OOP, and Java topics such as collections, threading, queues, and Spring annotations. Candidates also encountered questions about JVM memory, microservices, C and C++, and the time and space complexity of a solution. Prioritize the technologies and design choices actually represented in your experience rather than assuming every interview uses the same stack.
Behavioral discussion is also recurring. Candidates mention conflict resolution, leadership, teamwork, risks, challenges, career goals, and explaining a difficult concept to a teammate. Build concise STAR stories that establish the situation, your specific actions, and the result. Practice explaining solutions aloud as well as writing them, since the reports emphasize fundamentals, projects, and practical reasoning. End-to-end timing is not consistently reported in the available accounts.
Synthesized from 10 candidate reports by our editorial team.
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Real interview reports from people who went through the Barclays process.
The process at Barclays had a clear structure. First came an introductory call with the Talent team to get to know me and discuss my background. Then I moved to a take-home technical assignment where I built a REST API using Spring Boot — this was a practical way to demonstrate my coding skills in a real-world context. The assignment covered API REST design principles, JWT authentication, and database transactions, so I needed to think through not just getting it to work but making it production-ready.
The final stage was a competency-based interview with the hiring manager. This was less about algorithm optimization and more about storytelling. They asked me to walk through my previous experiences using the STAR method, and they probed into how I approached different technical and architectural decisions. They also pulled questions directly from my CV — if I'd mentioned a project, they wanted to know the details, my role, and what I learned. Two interviewers from the software engineering team were present, and they weren't looking for textbook answers on multithreading or design patterns; they wanted to understand my thought process and whether I aligned with Barclays' values around collaboration and impact.
The whole process felt structured and deliberate. Technical depth mattered, but so did cultural fit. If you prep for this role, focus less on grinding LeetCode and more on being able to articulate your engineering decisions clearly and connect them to real outcomes.
Prep tip from this candidate
Practice explaining your past projects in detail using STAR — especially architectural and design decisions around REST APIs, authentication, and transactions. Be ready to discuss trade-offs and why you made specific technical choices. The behavioral component is weighted heavily, so prepare specific stories that show how you solved problems and aligned with company values.
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Sourced from candidate reports and verified by our team.
Topics based on recent interview experiences.
Featured question at Barclays
Select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department
| Question | |
|---|---|
| Find the Missing Number | |
| Bagging vs Boosting | |
| Attribution Rules | |
| Sort Strings | |
| CNNs vs Intensity-Based Features | |
| Priority Queue Using Linked List | |
| Prime Numbers Identification | |
| String Palindromes | |
| Blob Indexing | |
| Impossibly Iterative Fibonacci | |
| Safe Deployments | |
| Why Do You Want to Work With Us | |
| Justify a Neural Network | |
| Your Strengths and Weaknesses | |
| Dropbox Database | |
| Employee Salaries | |
| Merge Sorted Lists | |
| Subscription Overlap | |
| Closest SAT Scores | |
| Empty Neighborhoods | |
| Top Three Salaries | |
| Monthly Customer Report | |
| Rolling Bank Transactions | |
| String Shift | |
| Maximum Profit | |
| Prime to N | |
| Comments Histogram | |
| Top 5 Turnover Risk | |
| Like Tracker |
Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Candidates report an assessment before live interviews. Formats varied: one described MCQs plus coding, another reported a string problem with SQL and OOP, and another saw aptitude-style material. Practice clear solutions to approachable coding prompts and revisit the relevant fundamentals.
Candidates commonly report technical conversations built around past projects and experience. Be ready to explain implementation choices, algorithms, trade-offs, technologies, challenges, and how you approached a problem; reported topics also include data structures, SQL, databases, Java, and OOP.
Candidates report behavioral questions either alongside technical content or in a separate culture-focused conversation. Prepare concrete examples about leadership, conflict resolution, teamwork, initiative, risks, challenges, and explaining a difficult concept to a teammate.
