Prepare for and practice interview questions from Blackline.

Blackline Interview Questions

A/B Testing

Algorithms

Analytics

Machine Learning

Probability

Product Metrics

Python

Statistics

Blackline Interview Guides

Suppose there exists a new airline named Jetco that flies domestically across North America. Jetco recently had a study commissioned that tested the boarding time of every airline, and it came out that Jetco had the fastest average boarding times of any airline.

What factors could have biased this result, and what would you look into?

What could potentially bias the average boarding time in favor of an airline that only flies domestically?

What could potentially bias the average boarding time in favor of an airline that only flies domestically?

Boarding Times Bias

A new airline came out as the fastest average boarding times compared to other airlines.  What factors could have biased this result and what would you look into?

You are testing hundreds of hypotheses with many t-tests. What considerations should be made?

What is a key disadvantage of the F-test when compared to multiple t-tests?

What is a key disadvantage of the F-test when compared to multiple t-tests?

Hundreds of Hypotheses

You are testing hundreds of hypotheses with many t-tests. What considerations should be made?

Let’s say that your company is running a standard control and variant AB test on a feature to increase conversion rates on the landing page. The PM checks the results and finds a .04 p-value.

How would you assess the validity of the result?

Experiment Validity

A/B Testing & Experimentation

Blackline Salaries by Position

Make Your Mark: As a Principal Software Engineer, you will play a crucial role in delivering high quality releases to our customers by defining application architecture, designing, developing, troubleshooting, maintaining, optimizing and scaling BlackLine’s cloud-based backend services and driving innovation into our product suite. In this role, you will work with management to identify strategic directions for system architecture. You will research, test, benchmark and evaluate new technologies, propose scaling solutions, collaborate with other teams to define and build new features, optimize existing features while writing elegant code, coaching and mentoring less experienced software engineers and communicating with people at all levels. In this position, every bit of your software design skill be drawn upon in order to drive towards and implement best of breed features in a rapid iterative environment. Your attention to detail, tenacity, and creative problem-solving and thinking ahead will directly impact the company's success, as well as the success of your peers across the organization. If you have a passion for delivering products that make a difference, are driven to make things better in all that you do and are eager to work in a collaborative agile environment where Developers are dedicated to solving customer problems and innovating, you will be a great fit for the team. You'll Get To: <ul><li>Provide technical expertise and leadership in technology direction, road-mapping, architecture definition, design, development, and delivery of enterprise-class solutions while adhering to timelines, coding standards, requirements, and quality. </li><li>Architect, design, develop, test, troubleshoot, debug, optimize, scale, perform the capacity planning, deploy, maintain and improve software applications, driving the delivery of high-quality value and features to BlackLine’s customers. Develop functional and technical specifications, and test plans. Review others’ code. Develop and document functional and technical requirements. Collaborate with other team members and other teams on all of the above. </li><li>Work collaboratively across the company to design, communicate and further assist with adoption of architecture and coding standards and best practices and architectural plans. Solve complex architectural and design problems, create robust architectural solutions. </li><li>Implement, refine, and enforce software development techniques to ensure that delivered features meet software integration, performance, security, and maintainability expectations. </li><li>Research, test, benchmark, and evaluate new tools and technologies, and recommend ways to implement them in product development. Identify and create solutions that are likely to contribute to the development of new company concepts while keeping in mind the business strategy, short- and long-term roadmap, and architectural considerations to support them in a highly scalable and easy extensible manner. </li><li>Identify and create solutions that are likely to contribute to the development of new company concepts while keeping in mind the business strategy, short- and long-term roadmap, and architectural considerations to support them in a highly scalable and easy extensible manner. </li><li>Actively participate in research, development, support, management and other company initiatives designing solutions to optimally address current and future business requirements and infrastructure plans. </li><li>Inspire a forward-thinking team of developers, acting as an agent of change and evangelist for a quality-first culture within the organization. Mentor and coach key technical staff and guide them to solutions on complex design issues. </li><li>Establish strong relationships with company's leadership to ensure the use of technologies are well </li><li>understood. Act as a conduit for questions and information flow, when those outside of Engineering have ideas for new technology applications. </li><li>Speak in terms relevant to audience, translating technical concepts into non-technical language and vice versa. Facilitate consensus building while striving for win/win scenarios and elicit value-add contributions from all team members in group settings. </li><li>Maintain a strong sense of business value and return on investment in planning, design, and communication. </li><li>Proactively identify issues, bottlenecks, gaps, or other areas of concern or opportunity and work to either directly affect change, or advocate for that change by working with peers and leadership to build consensus and take action. </li><li>Perform critical maintenance, deployment, and release support activities, including occasional off-hours support. </li><li>Other duties as assigned. </li></ul> What You'll Bring: <ul><li>BS degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience. </li><li>10+ years of experience with software development in general purpose programming languages including but not limited to: C#, Java, C/C++. </li><li>8+ years of hands-on experience in building Web Applications, SaaS products, and RESTful APIs. </li><li>2+ years’ experience in the Application, System, Solution or Data Architecture including strategic IT planning and integration. </li><li>Strong expertise in translating business strategies into technical, strategic and execution plans (road-maps). </li><li>A solid computer science foundation including data structures, algorithms, and design patterns, with a proven track record of software design and architecture of complex systems. </li><li>Experience in service-oriented architecture and aspect-oriented programming. </li><li>Experience as a technical influencer for highly scalable distributed system designs. </li><li>Experience as a technical lead on significant development initiatives. </li><li>Superior analytical and problem-solving abilities. </li><li>Excellent written and verbal communication skills. </li><li>Adaptable team player with strong collaboration skills and a focus on results and value delivery. </li><li>Prior working experience in Scrum, or other Agile development methodologies, is preferred. </li></ul> We’re Even More Excited If You Have: <ul><li>Experience designing and building cloud-native integration platforms, preferably serverless and event-driven (e.g., Pub/Sub, Kafka, EventBridge). </li><li>Hands-on expertise with iPaaS tools such as Workato, MuleSoft, Boomi, or similar platforms. </li><li>Strong understanding of ETL and ELT patterns, and experience implementing data ingress and egress pipelines on GCP, AWS, or Azure. </li><li>Familiarity with orchestration/dataflow platforms such as Apache NiFi or Airbyte. </li><li>Experience building or managing a Connector Marketplace, including support for partner-contributed integrations. </li><li>Integration experience with ERP systems (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics), with emphasis on general ledger and financial data flows. </li><li>Knowledge of secure software design, including OAuth2, SAML, and API security best practices. </li><li>Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD pipelines. </li><li>Domain experience in FinTech or Financial Services is a plus. </li><li>Contributions to open-source projects or active community involvement are desirable. </li></ul> Thrive at BlackLine Because You Are Joining: <ul><li>A technology-based company with a sense of adventure and a vision for the future. Every door at BlackLine is open. Just bring your brains, your problem-solving skills, and be part of a winning team at the world's most trusted name in Finance Automation!</li><li>A culture that is kind, open, and accepting. It's a place where people can embrace what makes them unique, and the mix of cultural backgrounds and varying interests cultivates diverse thought and perspectives.</li><li>A culture where BlackLiner's continued growth and learning is empowered. BlackLine offers a wide variety of professional development seminars and inclusive affinity groups to celebrate and support our diversity.</li></ul>BlackLine is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, age, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, ancestry, color, marital status, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking, medical condition, genetic information, or any other protected class or category recognized by applicable equal employment opportunity or other similar laws.BlackLine recognizes that the ways we work and the workplace itself have shifted. We innovate in a workplace that optimizes a combination of virtual and in-person interactions to maximize collaboration and nurture our culture. Candidates who live within a reasonable commute to one of our offices will work in the office at least 2 days a week. Salary Range: USD $251,000.00 - USD $314,000.00 Pay Transparency Statement: Placement within this range depends upon several factors, including the applicant's prior relevant job experience, skill set, and geographic location. In addition to base pay, BlackLine also offers short-term and long-term incentive programs, based on eligibility, along with a robust offering of benefit and wellness plans.BlackLine is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible experience for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation that would better enable your success during the application or interview process, <a>please complete this form</a>. Accommodations: BlackLine is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible experience for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation that would better enable your success during the application or interview process, please complete <a>this form.</a>

Get to Know Us:It's fun to work in a company where people truly believe in what they're doing! At BlackLine, we're committed to bringing passion and customer focus to the business of enterprise applications. Since being founded in 2001, BlackLine has become a leading provider of cloud software that automates and controls the entire financial close process. Our vision is to modernize the finance and accounting function to enable greater operational effectiveness and agility, and we are committed to delivering innovative solutions and services to empower accounting and finance leaders around the world to achieve Modern Finance. Being a best-in-class SaaS Company, we understand that bringing in new ideas and innovative technology is mission critical. At BlackLine we are always working with new, cutting edge technology that encourages our teams to learn something new and expand their creativity and technical skillset that will accelerate their careers.Work, Play and Grow at BlackLine! Make Your Mark: As a Staff Software Engineer, you will play a crucial role in building the next generation of BlackLine application. You will be driving innovation into our product suite by designing, developing, troubleshooting, maintaining, optimizing and scaling cloud-based applications and services. In addition to being a hands-on engineer, you will make important decisions regarding the design and architecture of the software and lead and mentor other engineers. If you have a passion for delivering products that make a difference, are driven to make things better in all that you do and are eager to work in a collaborative agile environment where developers are dedicated to solving customer problems and innovating, we would love to talk to you. You'll Get To:<ul><li>Provide technical expertise in requirements analysis, design, effort estimation, development, testing and delivery of highly scalable and secure distributed backend services.</li><li>Work with product management, architects and other engineering teams to understand stated and unstated needs and turn them into functional and technical requirements.</li><li>Maintain a strong sense of business value and return on investment in planning, design, and communication.</li><li>Lead technical design and architecture discussions and drive technical decisions while making appropriate trade-offs on technology, functionality, robustness, performance and extensibility.</li><li>Estimate the work scope and timelines, and consistently deliver on those commitments.</li><li>Implement, refine, and enforce software development techniques to ensure that the delivered features meet software integration, performance, security, and maintainability expectations.</li><li>Research, test, benchmark, and evaluate new tools and technologies, and recommend ways to implement them in product development.</li><li>Maintain high standards of software quality and technical excellence within the team by establishing good practices and writing clean, testable, maintainable, and secure code.</li><li>Contribute to a forward-thinking team of developers, acting as an agent of change and evangelist for a quality-first culture within the organization.</li><li>Mentor and coach team members to guide them to solutions on complex design issues and do peer code reviews.</li><li>Proactively identify issues, bottlenecks, gaps, or other areas of concerns or opportunities and work to either directly affect change, or advocate for that change.</li><li>Perform critical maintenance, deployment, and release support activities, including occasional off-hours support.</li></ul> What You'll Bring:<ul><li>Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, Computer Science or related disciplines.</li><li>10+ years of professional experience in building Web scale highly available multi-tenant SaaS with focus on backend platform, frameworks, RESTful APIs and microservices.</li><li>2+ years of experience with a public cloud (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and solid understanding of cloud-native services.</li><li>Extensive experience with SQL, relational database design, SQL query optimization</li></ul> Education: BS degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience. Technical/Specialized Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:<ul><li>Expert in C#</li><li>Fluent in MSSQL, SQL, data modeling and transactional flows.</li><li>Fluent in Javascript, ReactJS framework and/or Angular framework.</li><li>Specific things they should be knowledge about:</li><li>REST APIs</li><li>ASP.NET Core</li><li>Asynchronous programming</li><li>Multithreading / concurrency</li><li>Distributed systems</li><li>A solid computer science foundation including data structures, algorithms, and design patterns, with a proven track record of writing high concurrency, multi-threaded, secure, scalable code.</li><li>Proven experience in working with API gateway services such As Apigee, identity management, authentication and authorization.</li><li>Working knowledge of event driven architecture and experience with a messaging service such as Kafka.</li><li>Superior analytical, problem-solving and system level performance analysis abilities.</li><li>Excellent written and verbal communication skills.</li><li>Adaptable team player with strong collaboration skills and a focus on results and value delivery.</li><li>Experience with ORM frameworks such as Entity Framework or Hibernate.</li><li>Experience working in an Agile development environment.</li><li>Passion for engineering excellence through automation, unit testing, and process improvements.</li></ul> We’re Even More Excited If You Have: <ul><li>Experience with continuous delivery and infrastructure as code.</li><li>Good knowledge of internet security issues in software design and code.</li><li>FinTech or Financial services domain background.</li><li>Front End frameowrk expeirnece; React preferred</li><li>Good knowledge of internet security issues in software design and code.</li><li>Experience with continuous delivery and infrastructure as code</li></ul> Thrive at BlackLine Because You Are Joining: A technology-based company with a sense of adventure and a vision for the future. Every door at BlackLine is open. Just bring your brains, your problem-solving skills, and be part of a winning team at the world's most trusted name in Finance Automation! A culture that is kind, open, and accepting. It's a place where people can embrace what makes them unique, and the mix of cultural backgrounds and varying interests cultivates diverse thought and perspectives. A culture where BlackLiner's continued growth and learning is empowered. BlackLine offers a wide variety of professional development seminars and inclusive affinity groups to celebrate and support our diversity. BlackLine is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, age, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, ancestry, color, marital status, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking, medical condition, genetic information, or any other protected class or category recognized by applicable equal employment opportunity or other similar laws. BlackLine recognizes that the ways we work and the workplace itself has shifted. We innovate in a workplace that optimizes a combination of virtual and in-person interactions to maximize collaboration and nurture our culture. Candidates who live within a reasonable commute to one of our offices will work in the office at least 2 days a week. Salary Range: USD $170,000- $213,000 Pay Transparency and Candidate Accessibility: Placement within this range depends upon several factors, including the applicant's prior relevant job experience, skill set, and geographic location. In addition to base pay, BlackLine also offers short-term and long-term incentive programs, based on eligibility, along with a robust offering of benefit and wellness plans. BlackLine is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible experience for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation that would better enable your success during the application or interview process, please complete <a>this form.</a>

Question	Topic	Difficulty	Ask Chance
Boarding Times Bias	Statistics	Medium	Very High
Hundreds of Hypotheses	Statistics	Medium	Very High
Experiment Validity	A/B Testing & Experimentation	Medium	Very High

Blackline Interview Questions

Blackline Interview Guides

Blackline Interview Questions

Blackline Salaries by Position

Blackline Opening Jobs