Bloomberg · Primly Community

Completed the Bloomberg SWE loop last month. Here's what actually mattered.

backend_bekah · 5 replies

Did the full loop for a mid-level backend role on one of the data infrastructure teams. Six rounds total. Phone screen with HR, then a 45-min technical screen that was basically a warm-up DSA question in C++. Then the onsite: two more coding rounds, one system design, one behavioral, and a 'technical culture fit' chat with a senior engineer that was half interview half conversation.

The coding rounds were not LeetCode hard. More like medium-difficulty problems where they wanted you to talk through every decision. I explained why I was picking a hash map over a sorted array and the interviewer literally said 'good, that's what I wanted to hear.' The answer mattered less than the explanation.

System design was intense. Mine was around designing a real-time pricing feed for equities. If you don't know what bid-ask spread is or why latency matters in market data, go learn the basics before your design round. They're not expecting you to have financial domain expertise but 'I don't know what a tick is' will not help you.

Behavioral was straightforward. STAR format, ownership and collaboration questions. One around a time you disagreed with a technical decision and what happened.

Timeline was about 5 weeks start to finish. Offer came in on a Thursday, they gave me a week to decide.

5 replies

newgrad_neil

thank you for this. did they tell you to use C++ specifically or could you pick? i'm a Python person and i'm nervous about the language requirement

backend_bekah

for my loop they said any language was fine for the coding rounds but the interviewer mentioned they'd expect me to know C++ eventually on the team. i used Python and it was fine. the system design round is language-agnostic obviously. but if you're going for a pure systems or low-latency role, i'd brush up on C++ basics at minimum.

careerveteran

the 'technical culture fit' chat you mentioned is a real thing across Bloomberg's loop. what they're actually evaluating is whether you can have a peer-level technical conversation. don't treat it as a break round. I've seen candidates lose offers on that round because they stopped performing and just chatted.

visa_vik

did they ask about visa status at any point in the process? bloomberg is supposedly one of the better sponsors but i'm never sure when it comes up

backend_bekah

recruiter asked on the first call, pretty matter-of-factly. said they do sponsor H1B but it's team-dependent. my team did. she said to confirm which team before going too far in if sponsorship is a hard requirement for you.