went through the j&j swe loop recently for a role on their medtech digital team in new jersey. sharing my notes since i couldn't find much online that was recent.
the process was 5 stages total.
recruiter screen (30 min): pretty standard. they asked about background, why j&j, and confirmed i was ok with hybrid in somerville. recruiter was friendly and actually knew the team. not just reading from a script.
hiring manager intro (45 min): technical background questions, what i'd worked on, some questions about working in a regulated environment (fda compliance stuff came up). they're not expecting you to know medtech regulations cold, but they want to know you're not allergic to process.
online assessment: hackerrank, 90 minutes, 2 coding problems. more on this in the separate thread but medium-level overall. one was a string/array problem, one was graph traversal. not leetcode hard.
technical panel (4.5 hours, 2 interviews): this was the main event. one session was system design (45 min), one was behavioral/coding mix. i had two interviewers per session. everyone was professional but the energy was corporate. not the frenetic startup vibe, more like a thoughtful discussion.
final debrief / offer call: happened about 2.5 weeks after the panel. no feedback loop, just a call with the recruiter to extend the offer.
total timeline was roughly 7 weeks from application to offer. long but not the worst i've seen for a company this size. they move at j&j speed, which is what it is.
few things i'd flag: behavioral questions were very competency-framework heavy. they explicitly said they use a structured rubric. leadership, collaboration, dealing with ambiguity. prep your star stories. the system design was more focused on reliability and data integrity than raw scale, which fits the healthcare context. they want to know what happens when your pipeline drops a record and a doctor gets bad data.
overall: not a flashy interview but a fair one. comp came in around market for the area, not faang-level. if you're ok with a more deliberate culture and the mission angle matters to you, it's worth pursuing.