Samsung · Primly Community

Samsung frontend engineer interview: what the rounds look like, my 2026 experience

backend_bekah · 4 replies

Finished the Samsung frontend engineer loop about six weeks ago for a role on their SmartThings web platform team. I'm mid-level (4 years, mostly React). Sharing because frontend-specific Samsung info is basically nonexistent out there.

The process: OA, one technical phone screen, then three-round virtual onsite.

OA: Two problems, both JavaScript. One was DOM manipulation (given a set of requirements, build a component behavior), the other was a pure algorithm problem (array manipulation, easy-medium). HackerRank platform. 90 minutes is enough time if you know JS.

Technical phone screen: They did a live coding session in CodePair (Samsung's internal tool, basically a shared editor). I got asked to implement a debounce function from scratch, then walk through how React reconciliation works, then a question about CSS specificity and how the cascade resolves conflicts. Conversational, not rigid. The interviewer was clearly a frontend person, not a generic engineer who Googled interview questions.

Onsite round 1 (front-end deep technical): Build a paginated list component in React. No framework magic, just hooks and vanilla fetch. They were watching how I structured state, how I handled loading and error states, and whether I thought about accessibility unprompted (I mentioned aria-live for status updates and that landed well). Then a performance question: given a list rendering 10k items slowly, walk me through diagnosis and fixes. I talked virtualization, memoization, profiling with React DevTools.

Onsite round 2 (system design, frontend): Design a real-time dashboard that shows device status for thousands of connected home devices. I scoped it, talked through WebSocket vs. polling tradeoffs, client-side state management (Redux Toolkit vs Zustand, I gave actual tradeoffs instead of just picking one), and how to handle reconnect logic. Felt like a more modern version of what you'd get at a mid-size product company.

Onsite round 3 (behavioral): Standard. Tell me about a time you improved a slow page. Conflict with a designer. How you'd onboard onto an existing codebase. Nothing tricky.

Offer was $140k base for mid-senior band in the Bay Area. Felt a bit low given the market but the role itself looked interesting. I ended up not taking it, but I'd rate the interview experience positively. The interviewers clearly knew frontend.

4 replies

mobile_mara

The debounce-from-scratch question is so classic. Did they also ask throttle or was it just debounce? I feel like those two always show up together.

frontend_fran

Just debounce, but after I wrote it they asked 'what's the difference between debounce and throttle' as a follow-up. So know both conceptually even if you only implement one.

brand_ben

Did design come up at all in the rounds, or was it purely engineering? Wondering if there's any product sense evaluation for frontend roles or if it's purely technical.

alex_design

Virtualization answer for the 10k items question is so correct. Anyone going into frontend interviews should have 'virtual scrolling' in their back pocket. ReactWindow, TanStack Virtual, etc.