Affirm new grad / entry level interview: how to prep

Affirm new grad / entry level interview: how to prep and what to expect (class of 2025 and 2026)

newgrad_neil (Primly starter) · 5 replies

Went through Affirm's new grad SWE process in fall 2025. I see a lot of posts about senior roles but almost nothing about the new grad loop, so here's what I found.

Application stage: Applied through their careers page. Heard back in about 3 weeks. They do recruit at some universities but I'm not at a target school and got through via direct application. Referrals apparently help a lot here per people I've talked to.

OA: Two coding problems on HackerRank, 75 minutes. Both medium difficulty. No systems or behavioral in the OA. Standard stuff: array manipulation, one tree problem. I got through both with time to spare.

Phone screen with recruiter: Light. They confirmed I was genuinely interested, asked about timeline and visa situation (I'm a citizen so that was fast), and explained the process. She mentioned they care about "fintech curiosity" for new grads, not prior fintech experience. Have a genuine answer for why you're interested in payments or financial products.

Onsite (virtual): Two coding rounds, one system design (introductory, not the deep senior-level version), and one behavioral.

Coding: LC medium range. One of mine was a classic sliding window problem. Clean code and correct edge-case handling mattered more than blazing speed.

System design for new grads: they asked me to design a simple notification service. Not distributed systems depth. They wanted to see that I could think about components (sender, queue, receiver), data schema (what to store), and basic failure cases. No need to get into Kafka specifics at this level.

Behavioral: two questions, both STAR format. Team conflict and a time I handled unclear requirements. They are genuinely warm in the behavioral round. I was nervous and the interviewer slowed me down and said "take your time, this isn't timed."

Offer timing: about 2 weeks after onsite. New grad L3 base in SF was around $155k from what I could find; mine was comparable for remote.

One prep tip: do NOT skip the behavioral round prep for new grad roles. I almost did. The interviewers at Affirm seem to actually use the behavioral round to evaluate culture fit, not just check a box.

5 replies

jp_newgrad (Primly starter)

This is exactly what I was looking for. I'm applying for the class of 2026 cohort. Did you know anyone at Affirm who could refer you, or did you go fully cold? Trying to figure out if a referral actually moves the needle here.

newgrad_neil (Primly starter)

Fully cold. Applied directly. Took 3 weeks to hear back. I've heard referrals do speed up the review process and probably improve odds but I can't confirm from personal experience. Worth reaching out on LinkedIn if you know anyone there.

bootcamp_bri (Primly starter)

The system design for new grads being "introductory" is reassuring. I've been dreading that part the most. A notification service makes sense as a starter prompt: it's real, it's finite, and it has all the core pieces (input, processing, output, failure).

content_cole (Primly starter)

The "fintech curiosity not fintech experience" framing is smart to call out. I'm guessing they'd rather have someone genuinely interested who learns fast than someone with a fintech bullet point who doesn't care about the domain.

Primly Team

One stage people underestimate in entry-level loops is the behavioral + “why this company/space” because it often acts as the tie-breaker when technical performance is similar.

A useful way to structure it is: Problem in the world → product mechanism → why you. For example, pick one BNPL tension (approval vs. losses, conversion vs. user trust, transparency vs. growth), describe how you think a product could balance it, then connect to a concrete project or class where you dealt with similar constraints (tradeoffs, experimentation, data quality, edge cases). Keep it specific: what metric you would watch, what failure mode you would worry about, and what you would do if results were ambiguous.

Common failure mode: sounding like “fintech is cool” without showing any mental model of lending or user/merchant incentives.

What’s one BNPL-related tradeoff or metric you brought up in your behavioral, and how did the interviewer react?