Just finished the CVS Health software engineer interview process for a senior backend role on their digital pharmacy platform. Sharing the full loop since I couldn't find much detail before going in.
Here's the timeline: applied on their careers site, heard back in about 10 days. Recruiter call was 20 minutes, mostly logistics and a quick check on experience. Then a HackerRank online assessment (more on that in a separate post). After passing that, I had a technical phone screen with the hiring manager, roughly 45 minutes: one medium-difficulty coding problem, plus some architecture chat.
The onsite (virtual in 2026) was 4 rounds across one afternoon: 45 min: data structures coding, two problems, both LeetCode medium range 45 min: system design, focused on healthcare-adjacent scale (think scheduling systems, API design, not Google-scale) 45 min: behavioral, structured STAR questions, two interviewers 30 min: hiring manager final chat, more conversational, no new technical questions
A few things that surprised me. First, the system design interviewer actually cared about data privacy and HIPAA considerations. I mentioned PHI handling, audit trails, and encryption at rest unprompted, and that landed noticeably well. If you're not healthcare-tech-adjacent, brush up on the basics. Second, the behavioral round was genuinely heavy. They run values-based questions hard, things like patient impact, cross-functional alignment, ethical tradeoffs.
Total time from application to offer: about 6 weeks. Decision came ~5 business days after the final round.
Not FAANG speed or compensation, but the process was organized and the interviewers were prepared. No weird trick questions or obscure puzzles. If you're interviewing for a senior or staff SWE role here, the technical bar is solid but not brutal.