Getting Hired
An inside look at the Airwallex hiring process for engineers
At Airwallex, we care about who you are, how you approach problems, your goals, and whether we’re a good fit. This blog will shed light on what it’s like to interview for an engineering position at Airwallex.
All of our interview paths first involve a call with a recruiter who will tell you a little more about Airwallex, the role, and the hiring process. We try to keep our interviews fairly informal and laid back so you’re able to operate at your best — so wear what you want, come relaxed and well-rested, and if the interviews are too early, too late or you require any other accommodations that will help you do your best, please let us know!
First, some interview tips
- Practice medium and hard questions on LeetCode beforehand. You’ll want to be able to solve these in about 30–40 minutes.
- Clarify the problem before you solve it. What are some ambiguous parts that could change your approach?
- Start with naive solutions, then improve. It’s easier to start with something and make progress than to try to get the perfect solution straight away.
- Tell us what you’re thinking. We want to see how you approach problems, including what solutions you’re considering, what assumptions you’re making, where you see issues before you write code, and so on.
- If you get stuck and can’t make any progress, you can always ask for help.
- Come prepared with questions for us! We’ll be transparent — this is your opportunity to understand what Airwallex is like and how you can grow here.
The Tech Screen (60 minutes)
After chatting with a recruiter, the first interview is a tech screen where you’ll tell us a little about your background and solve a coding challenge. These are pretty similar to easy and medium questions on platforms like LeetCode. We’re most interested in seeing your understanding of basic and common algorithms and how well you can apply them in coding challenges.
The tech screen is also a great opportunity for you to ask some of our engineers about life at Airwallex — such as what challenges we’re facing, or the best parts of the role and what it’s like working with a global team.
The Take Home Challenge or Live Coding Challenge (60 minutes live or 3–4 hours at home)
For our next interview, you have a choice between a take home challenge, or a live coding challenge. Both interview formats aim to go deeper into your technical ability — the code portion is more challenging than the tech screen. We’re interested in your ability to write readable code, make reasonable assumptions, and add a few tests to make sure your solution is correct.
In the take home challenge, you’ll be given a code challenge that you can work on in your own time. You’ll be provided with a set of files that outline that problem — which you can solve in a common language of your choosing — and you’ll return the files to us afterwards to review. We treat the files in the same way that we would treat any other code review i.e. whether the solution works, how easy your code is to read, the quality (not quantity!) of tests, etc. We typically find candidates complete the challenge in about 3–4 hours.
In the live coding challenge, we dig into a more challenging coding question in a 60 minute interview — we want to see your ability to take a problem, make assumptions, understand edge cases, code an initial solution in a language you’re comfortable with, write some tests, and iterate. It’s a good idea to find the trivial solution first and make it more efficient, rather than trying to find the best solution straight away. We’ll also ask you to assess the time complexity to see how well you can assess your own solution.
The System Design and Problem Solving Challenge (60–90 minutes)
The system design and problem solving challenge looks to assess how you approach problems at higher levels. We slightly modify this interview for each candidate (don’t worry we’ll let you know beforehand!) to dig into areas that we think are most relevant — you may have an interview that consists of just problem solving, or one that is solely focused on system design and architecture.
If you choose to complete a take home code challenge (as mentioned above), this interview will start with a code review of your solution. During this interview, one of our engineers will review your code and ask how you think you could improve it. We try to keep this as close to a real code review as possible.
Our systems assessment involves starting with a product and designing the technical solution behind it — such as coming up with the right architecture for a live messaging app. You should make sure you clarify the problem, the scale, and the functional and non-functional requirements. We want to see how you can think about a user, their requirements, and how that maps to a technical solution.
Our problem solving challenge is designed to understand how you approach abstract problems, and how well you can make assumptions, think through flow-on effects, and map those back to data structures and algorithms. Our typical problem solving challenge will start with a real world but ambiguous problem, such as, “what’s the fastest way to cross a city?”. We want to see how you scope and clarify the problem to make it more solvable. This includes making assumptions and focusing on the factors that have the greatest impact, then identifying a solution. We’ll then ask what data structures or algorithms your solution maps to, but we generally don’t expect you to write any code.
Final Interview (60 minutes)
Our final interview is with one of our senior leaders in engineering — usually our CEO, CTO, or a VP of Engineering. Hiring is critical to our success and we have engagement across the entire company to find and hire the best people we can find. This interview is our opportunity to make sure you’ll be a great culture fit for our team, you resonate with our company values, and to discuss the growth opportunities within Airwallex. It’s also your chance to ask any additional questions you might still have about the company, our engineering team, the direction we’re moving in, or anything else!
What happens next
After your final interview, our interviewers discuss how you did and assess where you’d be a great fit in the company. We try to be as thoughtful as possible about our hiring — including writing a thesis that outlines what your future looks like at the company, where you would be most successful, and which team would benefit the most with you on it. You should also take some time to reflect on your interview experience — it’s important that it’s a mutual fit.
Finally — we love feedback. We have designed our interview process to match how we work day-to-day, and try to connect you with people who can transparently talk about what life is like at Airwallex. If you have any suggestions or comments on what went well, or where we can improve, please let us know!
Good luck, and we look forward to meeting you!
