Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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19 stories

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CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
May 2026

Four Onsite Rounds, Mostly Production Code Not LeetCode

This company's interview format is pretty different from everywhere else, so it's worth writing up on its own. Of the four rounds, only one was a traditional coding round in the usual sense — the rest were all "here's a small requirement, write code that could ship to production." They use their own online environment, where you can run tests and also look things up in the docs. So pure template…

Onsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

A New Flappy-Bird OA With Coins Instead of Pipes

Locked — open it to unlock the full story with XP.

Online AssessmentXP0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Three OAs, a Block-Mining Coding Round, and Two AI-Assisted Rounds

I heard Coinbase had layoffs today. Not sure how that'll affect hiring. Sigh, hope everyone's okay. The people I dealt with, including HR, were all really nice. Sharing my previous interview experience — the whole process. HR reached out asking if I wanted to interview with Coinbase (I'd applied 4 years ago but never went further in the process — they might still have had my info), so I went ahea…

Onsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Rejected After Onsite Over a Debugging Nitpick

Round 1: crypto order system, pretty similar to other write-ups already on the forum. I had to parse the input myself and write my own test cases. I got to level 2 — after I finished the tests, the output had no issues, but I wasn't given level 3. Round 2: the "generate NFT" question, also already posted on the forum. Also had to define and parse the input myself — I used JSON. I finished the fir…

RejectedOnsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Passed Every Round, Lost to a More Experienced Candidate

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
CoinbaseMachine Learning Engineer
Feb 2026

Ran Out of Time on the CodeSignal OA

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RejectedOnline AssessmentXP0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Onsite Coding With No Test Cases, Then HR Ghosted

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No responseOnsiteXP0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

A Glitchy 90-Minute CodeSignal OA With Camera and Screen Recording

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Online AssessmentXP0
CoinbaseFrontend EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

Four Onsite Rounds, Rejected on System Design

I interviewed in March. I couldn't find a virtual onsite interview writeup for Coinbase Frontend Staff level on the forum. There were four rounds total. The questions themselves weren't that hard, but the bar was high. Tech Execution: Write a dropdown component. I'd suggest looking at a UI library's props beforehand, something like Ant Design. In this round you need to pay attention to reusable d…

RejectedOnsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

A Coding-Heavy OA on the Cloud Storage Problem

I just finished Coinbase's OA. Overall I felt the problems weren't that hard, but there was a huge amount of code to write. If you hadn't prepared for it ahead of time, I don't think a normal person could finish the whole thing on first sight. This kind of test is honestly ridiculous, damn it — it really feels like they're just hunting for code monkeys. The problem was the cloud_storage one that'…

Online Assessment0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

OA Full Marks, Then Rejected After the Virtual Onsite Coding Rounds

OA was a geography question. I solved all 4 questions and got a perfect score. VO BQ — not like a normal BQ, more like a conversation. The interviewer dove deep into how I'd improve my projects. I don't know why, but after about 20 minutes he seemed to lose interest. He asked if I had any questions for him. After I asked, he went back to asking me about projects where I used a lot of different ap…

RejectedOnsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Nov 2025

Two OAs and a 90-Minute Database Design Coding Test

There were two OAs total. One was a personality test and an aptitude test. The personality test had over a hundred questions, and some of them repeat — be careful not to contradict yourself between them. The aptitude test was very tight on time: figure relations, quantitative relations, vocabulary fill-in-the-blank, that kind of thing. It's hard to finish in time, so just guess when you have to.…

Online Assessment0
CoinbaseData Scientist
Oct 2025

Case Study, SQL, and a Live Python EDA Round

Part 1: case study plus SQL and Python. The case: an e-commerce company wants to send personalized emails to boost conversion rate. How do you measure success? It was basically the standard A/B test process — define the metrics, figure out how to calculate the sample size, all of that. There was a follow-up at the end: suppose we ran the experiment and saw conversion rate go up 20%, we thought it…

Onsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

A 45-Minute Phone Screen Building a URL Shortener

Sharing my backend phone screen with Coinbase. The process was a recruiter call, then the phone screen got scheduled about a week later, 45 minutes long. The question was to build the core logic of a URL shortener service, with the following requirements: Support generating short links Support automatically redirecting when a short link is visited Short links need an expiration time Concurrent ac…

In progressTechnical Screen0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Stuck on Debounce in the Autocomplete Round

Technical phone screen (1 round) It was a pure whiteboard-style coding round — I had to implement an autocomplete feature for an input box. Requirements: debounce, async fetch, and rendering the results. Follow-up: support keyboard navigation (up/down arrow keys to switch), highlight the selected item, and submit on Enter. I got stuck right at the debounce part — I couldn't get the event handler…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

Crypto System Design, a Handwritten Iterator, and a Food Delivery Coding Round

Virtual onsite: System Design -> Pretty much the same as a version of this question that's been reported before. It's designing a crypto currency trading system, with a third-party exchange, using a sync API to interact with that third-party exchange. I had prepared something similar before. But the interview still had some stumbling — I felt my understanding was a bit off, and only figured it ou…

Onsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

System Design, Two Coding Rounds, and a PIP I Didn't Mention to the Recruiter

HR: Basically just chatted about my general situation. But I didn't tell the recruiter that I'm no longer at Amazon — over the last year and a half I wasn't very proactive at my previous company, and I didn't really listen to my manager, and I got PIP'd in May. (Should I be more upfront with the recruiter about this? If I actually get an offer, will the company find out during the background chec…

Onsite0
CoinbaseData ScientistSenior+
Mar 2025

SQL, A/B Test Design, and a BTC Volatility Case

Background: Bachelor's degree in China + Master's in the US, Statistics / Data track 3+ years of data analysis / risk-control experience (mostly finance-related) Applied for: Data Scientist – Risk / Product Analytics (remote) Overall Process HR Screen → SQL & Stats → Product Case → Hiring Manager → Team Fit The whole process took about 4 weeks. Not super fast, but the feedback at each stage was p…

Onsite0
CoinbaseData ScientistSenior+
Feb 2025

Passed the Virtual Onsite After SQL, A/B Test Design, and a Business Case Round

Locked — open it to unlock the full story with XP.

In progressOnsiteXP0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

Share your experience to earn XP