i just finished the CrowdStrike associate software engineer interview process. class of 2025. going to write everything down while it's fresh because when i was searching for new grad prep info for CrowdStrike specifically i found almost nothing.
not posting my outcome yet because it's still pending. but the process itself is worth sharing.
the pipeline: skip to the good part: it's a recruiter screen, an OA (online assessment, 90 mins, 2 coding problems on HackerRank), then a virtual onsite with 3 technical rounds and 1 behavioral.
OA difficulty: both problems were medium-level. one was graph-traversal adjacent (BFS/DFS on a network of nodes), one was string manipulation with some edge cases. time management matters, they expect both solved. i'd estimate Leetcode mediums at around 55-60 on the difficulty dial. not hard, but not free.
virtual onsite:
round 1, coding: live pair programming. one medium problem. they asked me about my thought process out loud the whole time, so talking through your approach before coding is the move. got a graph problem again: finding connected components in a network. if CrowdStrike is showing up twice with graph problems, study graphs.
round 2, technical concepts: no coding, but they asked questions about fundamentals. what's the difference between a process and a thread. explain what happens when you type a URL into a browser (classic). one question about how you'd design a simple logging system. they said it's fine to be high-level, they're checking that you can think through a system, not design a full architecture.
round 3, security context: one round where they wanted to see if you had any interest in or exposure to security. i don't have a security background, i was honest about that. they asked: if you were designing a system that needed to verify file integrity, what would you think about. i said checksums, hashing, signing. that was good enough.
behavioral round: core STAR questions. tell me about a time you debugged something really difficult. tell me about a time you disagreed with a technical decision. come with 3-4 polished stories.
prep rec: graphs (BFS/DFS), OS basics, one simple system design concept. know why you want to work in security even if you've never worked in it directly. they hire generalists for new grad roles, but intellectual curiosity about the domain matters.
will update when i hear back.