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EY software engineer interview process, full loop: what I went through in 2026

infra_ines · 4 replies

Just finished EY's full software engineer interview process for a role on their tech consulting side (EY-Parthenon adjacent, not pure advisory). Wanted to document it while it's fresh because information out there is scattered and mostly about the consulting tracks.

The loop had four stages total.

Stage 1: Recruiter screen. 30 minutes. Standard background walk-through, why EY, work auth confirmation. The recruiter also gave a quick pitch on the EY NextWave tech practice. No technical questions at this stage.

Stage 2: Online assessment. Two parts. First part was a HackerRank-style coding test, two problems, 90 minutes. One was a straightforward array/hashmap problem (medium difficulty, not hard). The second was a bit graph-flavored but you could brute force it and still pass within time. Second part was situational judgment questions, the kind where you pick the best and worst response from four options. Classic EY format.

Stage 3: Technical interview. One hour with a senior engineer on the team. He asked me to walk through a recent project, then we did a live coding exercise: build a simple cache with an eviction policy. Not LRU specifically, but similar territory. Also had a 15-minute section on system design basics: how would you design a simple notification service? He was interested in how I broke the problem down more than a complete answer.

Stage 4: Final behavioral panel. Two interviewers, 45 minutes. One person from the hiring team, one from HR. Standard STAR-method questions: examples of leading without authority, handling conflict, delivering under a tight deadline. EY's values show up here: teaming, integrity, this idea of building a better working world. Know those.

Overall timeline was about 5 weeks start to offer. Slower than product companies, more structured than I expected. The process felt professional but not particularly rigorous technically. If you've survived a FAANG loop, this is a different gear.

4 replies

newgrad_neil

really helpful, thanks. did they tell you the HackerRank difficulty level ahead of time or did it just show up? i'm prepping for the OA right now and not sure whether to drill mediums or hards.

corp_refugee

they said 'moderate difficulty' in the prep email which turned out to be accurate. i did not see a single hard. confident mediums is the right level to prep at.

visa_vik

5 weeks is on the longer side. did they move fast once you had competing offers or was it a fixed pace regardless?

careerveteran

the situational judgment portion is classic Big 4. they weight it more than candidates expect. i've seen strong coders get cut because the SJT scores were below threshold. don't skip it.