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      Software Engineer Interview

      1 Mar 2023
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Canonical in Oct 2022

      Interview

      The process was basically the same as other Software Engineering described here, with 4 stages. Each with "substages". The interviewers were very nice people. Most of them enjoyed chatting and were cool about answering questions about working for Canonical. The interviews, with the exception of the first one, took 1h each. The stages were something like this: - Stage 0: The application review is internal and is just a pre-selection of CVs after the application. - Stage 1: consisted of what they call a "written interview". I have been through this at least 3 times, in different processes. All of them, for some reason, asked about how I fared in STEM in high school and what I enjoyed about college. Come on now, this is on the brink of ridiculous. Well, then there are those psychometric and another automated evaluations that I did not have to repeat between processes. After those I had a short conversation with a member of the team I was applying for, 2 technical interviews and interview with a manager - Stage 2: Interview with HR with really generic questions about teamwork, leadership, hobbies, and salary expectation. Interview with another manager. 1 more technical interview with roughly the same questions from the first tech interview. Things started to get confusing after this. I sent an e-mail to the hiring manager, asking something about the process. They replied with a confusing message, as if I was another candidate on another stage of the process. Ok, no big deal, life goes on. - Stage 3: Interview with your highness, the almighty hiring manager, finally. After this stage, more confusion. After some time in the dark, I just sent a ping, asking if there was any news. The offer was in the approval chain. Cool, right? I was not even expecting information about an offer. I just wanted to know how long I would have to wait until the next information. Well, now with some expectation built up, more time in the dark, another ping and more reassurance. My offer was about to come out. I even celebrated silently. The offer? After 2 more days: "I'm writing to let you know that I will not progress your application further". A scripted rejection text. Frustrating, shocking, outrageous maybe? In the end, who cares if you are nice with the candidates if you end up treating them as cattle, really. The time invested in the process was not negligible. My take on this is that the manager has either mistaken me for another candidate when replying (the reason for the first confusion in the first place); or they just regretted selecting me and withdrew the offer.

      Interview questions [14]

      Question 1

      Describe a piece of software you wrote you are proud about.
      Answer question

      Question 2

      What do you think about open source?
      Answer question

      Question 3

      Have you worked with open source?
      Answer question

      Question 4

      Have you contributed to open source communities?
      Answer question

      Question 5

      What do you dislike about Ubuntu?
      Answer question

      Question 6

      Describe the boot process from start to end.
      Answer question

      Question 7

      Tell me about interprocess communication techniques.
      Answer question

      Question 8

      What are system calls? What is an example of a system call?
      Answer question

      Question 9

      What is a signal? How can you send a signal to a process?
      Answer question

      Question 10

      What are the differences between tcp and udp?
      Answer question

      Question 11

      Why can one run ping without root access?
      Answer question

      Question 12

      Which software installation processes do you know?
      Answer question

      Question 13

      What are the pros and cons when using packaged and containerized software?
      Answer question

      Question 14

      What are the differences between virtual machines and containers?
      Answer question
      7

      Other Software Engineer interview reviews for Canonical

      Software Engineer Interview

      13 May 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Canonical

      Interview

      It's an extremely long process that includes standardized tests, take home assignments, and several rounds of interviews. It was at least 5 rounds long and you interview across different teams.

      Software Engineer Interview

      12 May 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      London, England
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through other source. I interviewed at Canonical (London, England)

      Interview

      They have a really long, tiring interview process. The first round was a written interview where I had to answer like 15 questions. Then a coding interview with 1 hour time that I could do anytime for 2 weeks. Then I had to take a personality test and they totally ghosted me.

      Software Engineer Interview

      18 Apr 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Canonical

      Interview

      The first round is a bunch of questions like 30 or so where you have to describe your expierence, personal and academical information. Then there is a asynch technical interview and a psychology test.

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