i did the Home Depot online assessment and technical coding rounds in february 2026, mid-level SWE role (they were calling it SWE II). here's the breakdown.
online assessment: two coding problems, 90 minutes total, on HackerRank. both were leetcode medium. one string manipulation, one array/sliding window. nothing tricky. honestly, if you've done 30-40 mediums on leetcode you'll be fine. the timer felt generous.
there were also about 15 personality/values questions mixed in. multiple choice, stuff like 'you disagree with your manager's decision. what do you do.' classic corporate personality screening.
technical phone screen after OA: one 60-minute session with a staff engineer. they gave me a graph problem. BFS, not complicated, but they wanted me to walk through my thinking out loud the whole way. i'm decent at algorithms but the communication piece actually tripped me up at first because i was trying to think quietly. the interviewer had to prompt me twice to 'tell me what you're considering.' take note of that.
what was NOT in the coding rounds: no dynamic programming hard problems no system design in this phase (separate round) no take-home projects (at least for mid-level)
for the language choice: i used python, no issues. they don't care what you write in as long as you're fluent and explain your choices.
overall difficulty: honestly not that hard compared to what i've seen at Amazon or Google. the bar feels more like 'can you actually code and think out loud' versus 'have you memorized every leetcode hard problem.' which is... kind of refreshing.
that said, don't go in unprepared. i've heard they do screen out on the OA if you don't finish or your approach is completely off.