Just got through the Cloudflare new grad loop (L3 SWE). Writing this because I wish something like it had existed when I started prepping. I was terrified of interviewing at an infrastructure company coming from a background that was mostly web apps and a bit of algorithms coursework.
Here's what i figured out:
The coding rounds are doable. Two coding rounds, both medium difficulty leetcode. BFS/DFS, arrays, strings. You don't need competitive programming experience. If you can solve medium problems in 35-40 minutes, you're in the range. They want clean code and verbal explanation of your approach. Talk while you code.
The system design round at L3 is lighter. I was asked to design a URL shortener. Not the full distributed-rate-limiter stuff that senior engineers get. They adjusted for level, which I appreciated. But I'd still read about load balancers, caching basics (what is a CDN at a high level), and database reads vs writes. Knowing those made me sound prepared rather than lost.
The behavioral round surprised me. They asked STAR-style questions that felt pretty senior: 'Tell me about a time a project didn't go as planned.' I only had internship experience to draw on. What worked: being specific about what I personally did and why, not what my team did. Don't pad with 'we.' Even from an internship story you can own a clear individual contribution.
Why Cloudflare as a new grad: they pushed on this. I said I wanted to work on infrastructure that millions of websites depend on, and that I'd learned a lot reading their blog about how the internet works at scale. That landed well.
What didn't help: trying to memorize networking deep-dives. At L3 they're not expecting you to have built a BGP router. They want to see curiosity and baseline fundamentals.
Timeline for me: applied via LinkedIn, got an OA invite 10 days later, recruiter call, loop. Total from app to offer was about 7 weeks.
Ask me anything. Happy to help.