i'm a 2025 grad and i just finished mercury's new grad SWE loop. going to write this up because i was genuinely lost when i applied and couldn't find anything targeted at entry-level candidates.
first thing: mercury does hire new grads but it's not a huge batch like big tech. the process i went through had fewer rounds than what i've seen described for senior hires. recruiter screen, one coding screen, then a half-day virtual onsite.
recruiter screen. she was nice. asked the usual things: why mercury, what kind of projects excited me, experience with any fintech products. i had never worked in fintech so i just talked about projects that required reliability and data accuracy. that seemed to resonate.
coding screen. one LeetCode-style problem, medium difficulty. array manipulation with an optimal solution around O(n). i got it working and we had time to talk about edge cases and tradeoffs. they used a shared editor, no autocomplete. practice coding without your IDE safety net.
virtual onsite (4 rounds). coding again (one more medium, one that felt between medium and hard). a system design round that for a new grad was more "walk me through how you'd build X" than expecting a perfect distributed systems answer. they seemed to be looking for structured thinking. a behavioral round. and a product/values round where they asked what i care about in the companies i work for.
for the values round i talked about caring about financial infrastructure being trustworthy, which felt authentic because i do actually use mercury products. don't fake it, they can tell.
how to prep: neetcode 150 is enough for the coding. for system design as a new grad, i'd do mock interviews focused on breaking down requirements, not memorizing kafka vs. rabbitmq. and read about what mercury actually does as a bank, because the product/values fit piece is real.
i got an offer. all-in comp in the 160-175k range depending on equity vest. SF-remote hybrid. probably inline with the band for new grads.