I landed an offer at Wells Fargo for a new grad software engineer role and wanted to post this because I had almost no fintech background going in and was panicking about it. Turns out it matters less than I expected.
The interview process for entry-level SWE had three main components.
Online assessment first. Two coding problems, 90 minutes. Both were medium-difficulty leetcode equivalent. One was a string manipulation problem, the other was a graph traversal (BFS/DFS). Nothing tricky. If you can do mediums on your own without hints, you'll be fine. No SQL or system design here.
Technical phone screen. One interviewer, one coding problem, similar difficulty to the OA. They asked me to explain my approach before coding, which I appreciated because it forced me to think out loud. Then a few general CS questions: what's the difference between a stack and a queue, what is a REST API, how does HTTP work at a high level. Very core fundamentals.
Final round (3 interviews in one day, virtual). Here's the surprise: only one of the three was coding. The other two were behavioral. They use STAR format and they actually told me that explicitly. The behavioral questions were things like: describe a time you had to learn something quickly, tell me about a conflict with a teammate and how you resolved it, describe a project you're proud of.
For the coding round in the final, I got a medium dynamic programming question. I didn't fully optimize it but I communicated well and got a working solution, which they seemed happy with.
Things that helped me: I spent time reading about Wells Fargo's tech transformation (they've been investing heavily in cloud migration and modernizing their payment systems). I mentioned this in the behavioral rounds and it went over well. I prepared 5-6 STAR stories and practiced them until they felt natural, not scripted. I asked the recruiter about the team before my final round and got useful context.
What about fintech knowledge? They didn't test me on banking, compliance, or financial concepts at all. New grad roles are more about fundamentals and culture fit. The interviewers explicitly said they expect to train you on the domain.
Offer came about two weeks after the final round. Base was $115k in Dallas. Not FAANG money but solid for entry level and the stability is real.