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Adobe frontend engineer interview: what they asked, how it went

frontend_fran · 4 replies

Did the Adobe frontend engineer interview loop last month for a role on the Creative Cloud web team. Here's exactly what happened.

Recruiter screen (30 min): Intro, role overview, basic "why Adobe" chat. She mentioned the team works primarily in React with some legacy Angular they're slowly migrating. Good to know.

Technical phone screen (60 min): One coding problem, JavaScript-specific. They had me implement a debounce function from scratch, then asked me to extend it with a leading edge option. I've done this on LeetCode-adjacent sites before but the extension caught me slightly off guard. Then they asked a CSS question: explain how stacking contexts work and when z-index doesn't do what you expect. That one separated people I think.

Onsite round 1: UI implementation (75 min): Build a paginated list component. No frameworks, vanilla JS and HTML in a CodeSandbox-type environment. They cared a lot about accessibility: keyboard nav, ARIA labels, focus management. This was the hardest round for me personally. If you're a React dev who hasn't written vanilla JS in a while, spend some time there.

Onsite round 2: system design for frontend (60 min): Design a drag-and-drop editor (fitting, given Adobe's products). We talked about state management approach, undo/redo history stack, performance for large canvases, and how I'd handle collaborative editing at a high level. Very relevant to what they build.

Onsite round 3: behavioral (45 min): Standard STAR format. Cross-functional collaboration, technical disagreements, a time you had to make a tradeoff under pressure.

HM round (30 min): More of a conversation. She asked about my career goals and whether I wanted to stay individual contributor or move toward tech lead.

Overall impression: they take frontend craft seriously. This isn't "just get the backend working" frontend. If accessibility, performance, and component design are your thing, the vibe is good.

4 replies

mobile_mara

The stacking context question is a classic gotcha. I've bombed that question in a different context because I could not explain clearly why z-index was failing. Do they expect you to know the full MDN-level explanation or is a practical "here's how I'd debug it" answer enough?

quietquit_quincy

Vanilla JS and accessibility in the same round is spicy. A lot of "frontend" roles are really just React props passers. Sounds like Adobe is actually checking if you know the web. Respect.

frontend_fran

For the stacking context question: practical debugging approach was fine but you had to know WHY it works. "opacity less than 1 creates a new stacking context" kind of level. Not reading the spec, but not vague either.

pivot_pat

Did you get a take-home at any point or was it all live coding? Asking because I usually do better when I have time to think and the live-coding pressure tanks me.