Questions you should ask when interviewing for a Software Engineering position

Interviewing for a Software Engineer position?

Fortunately, the days of one-way interviews are (almost) a thing of the past.

It took us some time, but we have finally reached the age of two-way conversations during interviews!

Sure, the employer will ask all the necessary questions to assess your technical skillset and the fit with their current team – however there’s a BUNCH of questions YOU can ask in order to get a better understanding of the position you’re interviewing for. Not only does this give you the necessary intel in order to make an informed career decision when comes the time to consider a job offer, it also portrays you as a curious person that’s on the market for the RIGHT job – not simply A job.

Tailor questions to your audience

Pay attention to your interlocutor and what their role is.

Don’t simply rush through ALL the questions – work them into the conversation where it makes contextual sense instead. Adapt your question to the person you’re interviewing with. For example, don’t ask HR about their software product scalability problems and don’t ask the HM about their payroll frequency. You really don’t have to ask all of the questions listed below either, ask the ones you’re actually curious about and answers to which aren’t listed in the job description or don’t come up in a brief google search.

Related: How to interview as a Junior Software Developer

Note that if you’re interviewing through a headhunter, the majority of this information will of course be available to you before you even commit to the interview.

To make things more convient, questions topics are split into three main categories: Technical questions, Business questions and General / Job Opening questions.

Technical

Programming languages?

Frameworks?

Documentation?

Design patterns?

OS?

CI / CD / Containers / Deployment?

Cloud?

Version control?

Architecture (SOA / Monolith)?

Best practices?

Agile

Standups?

Sprint length?

User stories?

Estimates?

Release frequency?

Pair programming?

Code reviews?

TDD / Unit tests / Test frameworks?

Maintenance / refactoring?

Technical debt?

Legacy code?

Open source software / packages used?

Concurrent users on average?

How are the tasks divided between team members?

Knowledge sharing among the team / mentorship?

Frequency of performance reviews?

Business

B2B / B2C?

Who’s their typical client?

Investors / Profitable / Seed round?

Expansion plans?

How long has the company been operating for?

How many people work in the company

General / Opening

Working hours?

Flexible schedule?

Work from home?

Compensation?

Benefits?

Vacation?

Self-development, seminars, courses, hackathons?

Anticipated career advancement?

What’s the onboarding like?

Dresscode?

How many people work on your team?

How does one succeed in this role?