Tech Interview Questions: Software Engineering & IT Interview Guide 2026

Tech interviews are known for their rigor and unique format – from coding challenges to system design discussions to behavioral questions. Whether you are preparing for a FAANG interview or a startup role, this comprehensive guide covers the questions you need to master and strategies to succeed.

Types of Tech Interviews

• Technical Phone Screen: Initial coding assessment
• Coding Interview: Live problem-solving with code
• System Design: Architecture and scalability discussions
• Behavioral: Past experiences and culture fit
• Take-Home Assignment: Extended coding project
• Manager/Hiring Manager: Role fit and career discussion

Technical Coding Questions

Data Structures and Algorithms

• “Implement a function to reverse a linked list”
• “Find the longest substring without repeating characters”
• “Design an algorithm to detect a cycle in a graph”
• “Implement a LRU cache”
• “Find the median of two sorted arrays”
• “Serialize and deserialize a binary tree”

How to Approach Coding Questions

1. Clarify requirements: Ask questions before coding
2. Think aloud: Explain your thought process
3. Start with brute force: Then optimize
4. Write clean code: Readable, well-structured
5. Test your solution: Walk through examples
6. Discuss complexity: Time and space analysis

System Design Questions

Common System Design Problems

• “Design a URL shortener like bit.ly”
• “Design Twitter/X timeline and tweet functionality”
• “Design a distributed cache system”
• “Design a ride-sharing service like Uber”
• “Design a video streaming platform like Netflix”
• “Design a real-time chat application”

System Design Framework

1. Clarify requirements: Functional and non-functional
2. Estimate scale: Users, data, requests per second
3. Define API: Key endpoints and data models
4. High-level design: Major components and flow
5. Deep dive: Database design, caching, scaling
6. Address bottlenecks: Identify and resolve issues

Behavioral Questions for Tech Roles

Leadership and Teamwork

• “Tell me about a time you disagreed with a technical decision”
• “Describe a situation where you had to lead without authority”
• “How do you handle code review feedback you disagree with?”
• “Tell me about a time you mentored a junior developer”

Problem-Solving

• “Describe a technically challenging bug you debugged”
• “Tell me about a time you had to learn a new technology quickly”
• “How do you approach technical problems you have never seen before?”
• “Describe a project that failed and what you learned”

Amazon Leadership Principles (Common in Tech)

• “Tell me about a time you dove deep into a problem”
• “Describe when you delivered results despite obstacles”
• “Give an example of earning trust with stakeholders”
• “Tell me about a time you raised the bar for quality”

Role-Specific Questions

Frontend Developer

• “Explain the difference between CSS Grid and Flexbox”
• “How does the browser render a webpage?”
• “What are the pros and cons of different state management solutions?”
• “How do you optimize frontend performance?”
• “Explain React hooks and their use cases”

Backend Developer

• “Explain database indexing and when to use it”
• “How would you design an API for rate limiting?”
• “What is the difference between SQL and NoSQL databases?”
• “How do you handle database migrations in production?”
• “Explain microservices vs monolithic architecture”

DevOps/SRE

• “How would you design a CI/CD pipeline?”
• “Explain container orchestration with Kubernetes”
• “How do you approach incident response?”
• “What metrics do you monitor for system health?”
• “How do you handle secrets management?”

Data Scientist/ML Engineer

• “Explain the bias-variance tradeoff”
• “How do you handle imbalanced datasets?”
• “Walk me through your approach to a machine learning project”
• “What is the difference between L1 and L2 regularization?”
• “How do you deploy ML models to production?”

Questions to Ask Tech Interviewers

• “What does the tech stack look like and why was it chosen?”
• “How do you balance technical debt with feature development?”
• “What does the code review process look like?”
• “How are engineering decisions made on the team?”
• “What is the on-call rotation like?”
• “How do you approach professional development for engineers?”

Preparation Strategy

For Coding Interviews

• Practice on LeetCode, HackerRank, or CodeSignal
• Focus on patterns, not memorization
• Time yourself to simulate interview pressure
• Practice explaining your thought process aloud

For System Design

• Study real-world system architectures
• Read engineering blogs from major tech companies
• Practice whiteboarding
• Understand tradeoffs, not just solutions

For Behavioral

• Prepare 5-7 STAR stories that cover multiple competencies
• Include technical leadership examples
• Have failure/learning examples ready
• Research company values and prepare aligned examples

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