I got into this team's interview process through a friend's referral. The team was hiring a Full-Stack Engineer (SDE II). It ended up being one HR call, one phone screen, and four onsite rounds.
Besides the usual "why are you switching jobs" and "why Nordstrom" questions, what was different from other companies was that they directly asked about my salary expectations and gave me the package right there, very clearly stating "we can't compete with first-tier big tech, if you think that's okay we'll keep moving forward with the interview process" — I was honestly a bit surprised by how upfront that was. The base and bonus actually sounded fine, but not having stock is a real downside.
The phone screen was a 50-minute chat with the hiring manager. The LC question was very simple and the conversation was relatively relaxed — there's another post on the forum documenting that experience. It was mostly about checking skill match, then digging deep into my resume (they even asked a bit of system design based on a project on my resume — "why did you choose A over B in your design, and how would you change the design if your system scale grew further" — I was too weak for that, hadn't thought about it, and was sweating by the time they were done asking). At that point I figured I was basically done for, since I'm mainly backend and not the full-stack profile they wanted, and I hadn't used several of the technologies they were looking for. I didn't expect to get the onsite a few days later.
Probably because they're hiring for a full-stack engineer, the interview covered both frontend and backend. Four rounds total: system design, frontend, backend, and behavioral.
System design was surprisingly not hard — they had me design a reservation system. My initial design had some issues, but the interviewer was easy to work with and very patient, and going back and forth patching things up with them, I felt like I actually learned something new.
The frontend round was where I was absolutely miserable. I'd never done a frontend interview before, and this one was React + TypeScript + JavaScript. For someone who does frontend day-to-day this should be nothing — it felt about the level of the first one or two homework assignments in an undergrad React course, no styling involved, mostly writing logic, talking through your thinking, using useState/useCallback/onChange/onClick/useRef, working with map and lists. I didn't even get to the extension questions. But I don't write frontend code much — at work it's small fixes and bug patches at most, and even then I lean on ChatGPT for help. I always get tangled up on useState and sync/async issues, especially where the parameters go and how to use them. So even though I crammed a bit beforehand and barely slept the night before (maybe my brain not working right was partly the sleep deprivation too — I've just been a chaotic mess busy lately, kind of deserved it), I still did terribly. Terribly enough that the interviewer tried to comfort me at the end with "don't feel discouraged if you didn't do well." If you don't have a frontend foundation, I'd really suggest spending real time preparing properly, and even if you've dabbled a bit, keep reviewing steadily over time — don't be like me and drop the ball this badly in the actual interview, I wanted to find a hole in the ground to crawl into. They also asked a few behavioral questions, some resume-based questions about frontend-related experience, and asked about security concerns, which I could barely answer — pretty awkward. Definitely prepare for this round.
The backend round wasn't hard either — the most common kind of interview question, medium leaning easy, with some follow-ups expanding into edge cases, algorithm improvements, how you'd handle invalid input in production, etc. But I really hadn't been getting enough rest lately with everything going on, so my brain was working slowly, and by the time I finished answering all the follow-ups the interview was basically over. The interviewer wanted to get into system design or dig deeper into my resume, but we didn't get the chance to on my end. A bit of a shame.
I feel like their values are kind of similar to Amazon's leadership principles — I keep thinking, they're both retailers (?), how different can it really be. I'd prepared really carefully for my Amazon interview before — I ultimately didn't pass because I bombed the coding round, but I spent a lot of time on the behavioral questions, and the recruiter was also very dedicated, helping me revise my stories over and over, so I feel like it was still worth it. (I always feel like, whether you end up going there or not, interviewing onsite at Amazon is genuinely useful — at least for the behavioral round, the recruiter helps with interview prep, and it's really useful for refining your stories and using STAR. Not sure if I should put a winking emoji here, but I mean it.) After that, when I interviewed for behavioral questions elsewhere, I didn't spend much extra time preparing — I just tweaked the stories I'd built for Amazon. But this time's behavioral round was pretty different... it felt very loose, very dependent on the interviewer's mood, unlike the other five or six big and mid-size companies I've interviewed with. Some questions — I don't know if it was me not understanding correctly (maybe also the sleep deprivation messing with my brain) or a communication mismatch with the interviewer — I'd talk for a while and then the interviewer would say "okay, let me ask it a different way," which was pretty awkward. They asked how I understand "customer obsessed" or "customer focus" — based on other interview reports, they really care about this, so I'd suggest definitely preparing a related story and being able to articulate your own understanding of it. They also asked things like: "do you have an experience where you shared a service with another team and proposed an improvement that benefited both teams," "what experiences do you have showing ownership beyond your own responsibilities," something about security experience, what deployment strategy I've used, what I pay attention to in code review, what I focus on when designing a feature or service, what recently prompted me to learn some new technology, and my thoughts on switching industries — all pretty broad, open-ended questions in my view. I think this really tests how much you've internalized from your day-to-day work, whether you're attentive, and whether you show genuine curiosity about tech in your life. I consider myself someone who can talk a lot, but with limited time and my tendency to be wordy (low information density), I still ran into real difficulty and didn't feel great about my answers — which maybe also says this round is pretty random and depends heavily on who you get.
Overall, I think the technical bar here isn't that high, but it's not a total walk in the park either — especially for experienced hires, the interviewers try to read the candidate from other angles, trying to get a full picture of your passion for tech and your work experience. When I asked people "what do you like most about working here," most said their coworkers are great and helpful, the tech stack is pretty modern, switching teams is very flexible, work-life balance is great, and job satisfaction is high — which gave me the impression that even though the pay isn't huge, the culture is probably genuinely healthy. I've heard from friends that the New Grad interview is pretty easy, and the onboarding materials new hires get look lively and fun, which makes me think this is probably a solid opportunity for junior and mid-level folks. (Since I'm nowhere near senior myself, I won't comment on how it looks for levels above mine.)
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