BNY Mellon · Primly Community

Went through the full BNY tech loop last month, here's what actually happened

backend_bekah · 6 replies

Went through 4 rounds for a senior backend role on one of their securities processing teams. Sharing because I couldn't find much recent info when I was prepping.

Round 1: Recruiter call, 30 mins. Pretty standard: experience, why BNY, compensation expectations. She was organized and told me exactly what was coming next. Appreciated that.

Round 2: Hiring manager, 45 mins. More conversational than I expected. He asked a lot about how I've handled legacy codebases and what my philosophy is around incremental modernization vs rewrite. That framing showed up again later.

Round 3: Technical. Two engineers, 90 minutes total. First 45 was a coding exercise in a shared doc (not leetcode-style, more like "walk us through a design problem and write some real code"). Second 45 was system design: design a distributed transaction reconciliation service. They were very interested in failure modes and exactly how you handle consistency guarantees. Had to know CAP theorem not as a meme but as something you actually reason about.

Round 4: Behavioral panel with three people from different teams. Classic STAR stuff but the themes were: handling conflicts with compliance/legal constraints, times you pushed back on unrealistic timelines, and one about a situation where you prioritized correctness over speed.

Offer came 10 days after round 4. The role was hybrid, Pittsburgh or NYC base. TC was competitive for finance-sector tech, not FAANG-competitive. I'll post comp in the other thread.

6 replies

sre_sol

the distributed reconciliation question is almost verbatim what I got two years ago. they must love that one. did they ask you about idempotency specifically? they drilled me on that for like 20 minutes.

backend_bekah

yes, extensively. and then whether your idempotency key scheme still works when the underlying record schema changes. that's where I started sweating.

market_realist

10 days from final round to offer is shockingly fast for a bank. my BNY loop was 6 weeks and I got ghosted after round 3. might depend heavily on team and how badly they need the headcount.

visa_vik

did they bring up visa sponsorship at any point in the process? I have a role I'm targeting there and I'm not sure when to raise it.

backend_bekah

recruiter mentioned it on the first call unprompted. they do sponsor but apparently it depends on team budget. I'd ask directly on the first recruiter call, don't wait.

careerveteran

the legacy vs modernization framing in the HM call is a real signal about team culture. if the manager talks about it with energy, that team is probably actually moving. if it's vague, assume status quo.