Just finished the PwC online assessment and technical coding round. Posting because the info out there is from 2022 and the format has changed a bit.
The online assessment (OA): HackerRank platform. 90 minutes. Two coding problems and a situational judgment module.
The coding problems were both medium difficulty. One was graph-based (shortest path, BFS/DFS territory). One was string manipulation with some array work. Nothing that would stump you if you've been grinding LeetCode mediums. The time limit felt reasonable, I finished both with about 20 minutes left.
The situational judgment section is 25 multiple-choice questions. Scenarios like: a client is unhappy with a deliverable, a team member misses a deadline, you notice something questionable in a client's data. You pick the best response from four options. They're testing PwC's values (integrity, collaboration, teamwork under pressure). Don't try to game it. Answer how a decent, professional person would actually behave.
The technical interview (separate, with a PwC engineer): This came a week after the OA. 60 minutes. The interviewer gave me a coding problem first: medium difficulty, similar style to the OA. We worked through it in about 25 minutes. Then she asked me to walk through a system or project I was proud of and we talked through the architecture and decisions for the rest of the time.
That project discussion was the weightier part. She asked real follow-up questions. Not "interesting, what else" type stuff but actually drilling into why I made specific choices.
My prep: I did 3 weeks of LeetCode mediums, maybe 30-40 problems. That was enough. I also spent a couple hours refreshing on graph traversal because that category kept coming up in PwC reports I found.
Verdict: Not a coding gauntlet. Solid medium-level coding bar, but the bigger differentiator is whether you can discuss your engineering decisions like a professional.