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Affirm coding interview / online assessment, format and difficulty (2026)

quietquit_quincy · 4 replies

Went through Affirm's coding process in Q1 2026 while employed. Taking notes because I couldn't find recent info when I was prepping.

The OA (HackerRank) Two problems, 90 minutes. Both were medium difficulty, one leaning toward medium-hard. No hard leetcodes in mine. The first was a string manipulation problem with some edge cases around Unicode. The second was a graph traversal with a twist in the problem statement that you had to read carefully. Time was tight but manageable if you don't over-engineer.

No behavioral questions in the OA. Just coding.

The onsite coding rounds Two rounds in the onsite. Same general feel as the OA: medium difficulty, but the interviewer is watching how you think. They care about: Clarifying requirements before coding (I missed an edge case on the first pass because I didn't ask) Talking through your approach before typing Testing your own code. One interviewer actually said "walk me through what happens with an empty input" mid-solution

The problems were Python-friendly. I was asked to code in my preferred language and chose Python. No objections.

What surprised me: no dynamic programming in either round. I had drilled DP for two weeks. What came up instead was more about data structures and careful implementation. A linked list manipulation problem in one round. Very implementation-heavy.

Difficulty summary: LC medium range. If you're comfortable with mediums and can code cleanly under time pressure, you should be fine. Don't stress about hard problems for Affirm specifically.

FYI this is for a backend senior role. Might differ for other roles or levels.

4 replies

frontend_fran

The "no DP" observation is interesting. I've heard similar from a few Affirm candidates. Feels like they're testing implementation correctness and careful thinking more than algorithm optimization. Did they give you time hints or was it fully self-paced?

newgrad_neil

For the OA, did they tell you the score afterward or just pass/fail? I have no idea what threshold they use.

quietquit_quincy

Just a pass/fail. No score shown to me. I passed both test cases on problem 1 and 4 out of 5 on problem 2 (edge case I missed), and still moved forward. So it's not necessarily all-or-nothing.

pivot_pat

This is helpful. I'm coming from PM so my coding is a bit rusty. LC medium sounds like where I need to focus. Were there any specific patterns you'd say to drill beyond basic graph traversal?