Target Software Engineer candidates report coding assessments, practical Java and API work, design or project discussion, and behavioral or hiring-manager conversations.
$135K
Avg. Base Comp
$174K
Avg. Total Comp
3-4 rounds
Typical Rounds
2-4 weeks
Process Length
Target Software Engineer reports point to a mix of coding, practical engineering discussion, and communication. Prepare to explain your decisions while you work, not only to produce a final answer. Reported exercises include a shopping-cart class, Spring Boot endpoint signatures, REST API work, and debugging existing code while adding a feature and tests.
Coding formats vary. Candidates describe online assessments and problem-solving interviews, with questions ranging from accessible to moderate or harder. One reported array problem required duplicate removal without external data structures.
Technical conversations can also move into architecture and past work. Reports mention a Twitter-style design prompt, Java and OOP, microservices, deployment, SQL, HTTP and REST concepts, caching, Kafka, and resume projects. Be ready to describe a project clearly: the problem, your design choices, testing approach, and the trade-offs involved.
Later conversations may include a hiring manager, HR, behavioral questions, or scenario-based prompts. Prepare concise examples of collaboration, project ownership, and how you approach unfamiliar problems. The exact sequence differs by report, so use the core preparation areas rather than expecting one fixed format.
Synthesized from 12 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 Target process.
It was a phone screen for a SWE role, about 35 minutes. It started with some small talk that felt a little forced — not quite awkward, just off, like neither of us had really settled in yet. Once we got into the actual questions I felt pretty solid; I knew the material and answered confidently without much hesitation. But the conversation never really built momentum, and toward the end it just kind of trailed off rather than wrapping up with clear next steps. I left not totally sure what they thought or when I'd hear back.
Questions asked: Explain the difference between an interface and an abstract class — when would you use each? Walk me through how you'd design a class hierarchy for [a simple domain, e.g. a parking garage system]. What's the time/space complexity tradeoff between a HashMap and a TreeMap? How do you decide between unit tests and integration tests for a given piece of code? Describe a design pattern you've used recently and why it fit the problem.
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 Target
Select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department
| Question | |
|---|---|
| Monthly Customer Report | |
| Customer Orders | |
| Over-Budget Projects | |
| Average Order Value | |
| Normalize Grades | |
| Hurdles In Data Projects | |
| Black Friday Shopping Spree | |
| Common Prefix | |
| Seller Type Modeling | |
| Sales Leaderboard | |
| Client Solution Pushback | |
| Your Strengths and Weaknesses | |
| Slow OLAP Aggregations | |
| Random SQL Sample | |
| Top 3 Users | |
| Retailer Data Warehouse | |
| Total Spent on Products | |
| Cumulative Sales Since Last Restocking | |
| Valid Anagram | |
| Monthly Product Sales | |
| Max Quantity | |
| Total Transactions | |
| ATM Robbery | |
| String Palindromes | |
| Find Mismatched Words | |
| Testing Constraints | |
| Azure Kubernetes Infrastructure | |
| Friend Requests Down | |
| Why Do You Want to Work With Us |
Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Reports describe recruiter calls, online assessments, and phone screens before later interviews. Questions may test data structures, object-oriented design, collection trade-offs, testing choices, or a small coding task.
Several reports describe practical work such as implementing a shopping-cart class, writing Spring Boot endpoint signatures, building REST APIs, or debugging existing code, adding a feature, and writing tests.
Candidates report low- or high-level design discussions alongside questions about Java, microservices, deployment, SQL, HTTP, REST, caching, Kafka, and decisions made in prior projects.
Later conversations can include a hiring manager, HR, behavioral questions, project discussion, availability, or scenario-based prompts. Prepare examples that connect collaboration and past work to technical choices.
