I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify (Stockholm, Stockholm) in Jul 2019
Interview
I applied at Shopify for Senior Software Engineer role. After being shortlisted I got an initial call from HR in July 2019. The complete process is divided into 5 rounds.
1. Life Story Round - This is more like a behavior round where they ask you to tell the story of yourself mentioning how and why you came to engineering. They try to test your communication skills and dig into your motivation for being an engineer. The round takes like 1 hr.
2. Technical Screening - I had a back to back life story followed technical screening round. This round will demand you to code a straight forward code where the interviewer will observe how you code. This is to make sure that you know how to code before they start the real interview.
3. Technical Discussion - This is a one-hour discussion with an engineer where you discuss your current project and elaborate at least one of a problem which you solved end to end. The problem doesn't need to be very complex but you are supposed to go in detail when explaining the solution.
4. Pair Programming Interview 1 - It's a standard pair programming test where a problem will be given and you are supposed to code it end to end. The problem will not be very difficult and will not be requiring any kind of complex usage of Data structures.
5. Pair Programming Interview 2- Same as above.
The overall interview process was very fast and clean. I didn't get the offer in the last but I had a good interview experience. The overall expectation is quite high and you are supposed to think about TDD and perform clean code following SOLID principles in both of the pair programming rounds.
Tips to prepare for the interview
1. No need to stress yourself for complex data structures and algorithms
2. You are allowed to use the internet and check any documentation as no one can remember the syntax completely.
3. Make sure you focus a lot of TDD. I think every interviewer expects that you share some set of extensive test cases/path before writing the code.
4. Don't forget to tell them in detail why are you making each class and method. I tried to explain while coding but in the feedback, I was not vocal enough.
I passed LRU cache coding in first interview
I had four more interview.
1. pair coding again LRU cache I did what I did in previous one
2. system design I desinged staff level architectire
3. Technical deep dive I explained my current technical structure
4. life story he asked what we talked first screening
I got rejected .
Important part All I had interview was native speaker. None has accent.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Library Rare Books
Goals
Design the core systems to drive check-in and check-out flows. It should involve a web app (schema/APIs), a job system, and a file storage system.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify in Apr 2026
Interview
I recently completed the interview process at Shopify, which spanned about three weeks. The stages included an initial online cognitive assessment and a pair programming round, followed by a virtual onsite featuring a second pair programming session, a technical deep dive, system design, and a "life story" interview.
Overall, it was an excellent experience. The interviewers were professional and highly engaged throughout. I found the technical problems to be very practical, and notably, the use of AI coding tools was encouraged during the pairing sessions. While the system design requirements were quite lengthy, the complexity was manageable as long as you remain calm, think out loud, and clarify expectations early on.
Had an initial recruiter call, very friendly. Then had a life story interview, very friendly casual conversation as well speaking about past work experiences and how it led to where I am. Was scheduled for a 75 mins coding round, but I dropped since I landed another offer
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
More about why are you interested in Shopify and how I work