Hiive Software Engineer Interview Questions (Real Interview Experiences)

Candidates typically enter through an online application or via recruiter outreach, after which the team quickly screens for relevant product experience and overlap with their technology stack. This initial filter is fast and may include straightforward prompts such as “Tell me about yourself” and “What do you know about Hiive?” based on candidate reports.

The first live conversation is a short recruiter screen, commonly described as a 30 minute call covering your background, what you are looking for, and logistics. One candidate summarized it as a usual first screening call focused on past experience and what you are looking for, based on candidate reports.

An engineer-led round asks you to bring past code or a code sample and explain your decisions, tradeoffs, and reasoning under light pressure. Candidates describe it as rapid fire and centered on walking through prior work, including one report that summarized it as bringing some past code to walk through, based on candidate reports. For tips on structuring your answers when walking through past work and decisions, read our guide to the STAR method.

The core technical evaluation is a live coding exercise that is closer to building in their stack than pure algorithms, including a full stack build prompt in TypeScript and Elixir. Candidates reported being asked to build a full stack web application based on TypeScript and Elixir, and another noted they were given a repo to prepare prior to the interview and then asked to implement a feature, based on candidate reports.

A follow-up technical round focuses on system design, architecture, and higher-level engineering judgment rather than coding speed, and some candidates reported it as a separate assessment after a leetcode-style screen. One candidate described the sequence as two rounds of technical assessments where the first was leetcode based and the later was more architectural based, based on candidate reports.