The Software Engineer at Globus Medical plays a pivotal role in the development of innovative medical devices and software solutions that enhance patient care. This position is integral to the company's mission of advancing surgical and spinal technologies by providing robust software that ensures precision, safety, and efficiency in medical procedures. As a Software Engineer, you will contribute to projects that directly impact the lives of patients and healthcare professionals, making your work both meaningful and rewarding. At Globus Medical, you will engage with cross-functional teams, collaborating closely with hardware engineers, product managers, and clinical experts. Your contributions will directly influence the design and functionality of products, ensuring they meet the highest standards of quality and reliability. Whether you are developing backend systems, enhancing user interfaces, or participating in system architecture discussions, your expertise will drive the success of innovative solutions that address critical healthcare challenges. This role is not just about coding; it encompasses a broad range of responsibilities that require creativity, analytical thinking, and a deep understanding of software engineering principles. You will be at the forefront of technological advancements in the medical field, making this position both challenging and exciting.
Initial Screening
reportedThe process begins with initial screenings to assess candidate qualifications.
What to demonstrate
- The process begins with initial screenings to assess candidate qualifications
- Depth in C++
How to prepare
- Be able to walk your CV end to end in two minutes, and say why this company specifically.
- Have your salary expectations, notice period and location constraints ready, and ask for the rest of the loop in writing.
Phone Interviews
reportedCandidates engage in phone interviews with HR and technical managers.
What to demonstrate
- Candidates engage in phone interviews with HR and technical managers
- Depth in C++
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: Describe a challenging technical problem you encountered and how you resolved it.
- Answer aloud and timed: How do you ensure code quality and maintainability?
In-Person Interviews
reportedCandidates participate in in-person interviews with engineering teams.
What to demonstrate
- Candidates participate in in-person interviews with engineering teams
- Depth in C++
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: What methodologies do you have experience with (e.g., Agile, Waterfall)?
- Answer aloud and timed: How would you design a software system for a medical device?
Technical Evaluation
reportedThe interviews include technical questions to evaluate knowledge and skills.
What to demonstrate
- The interviews include technical questions to evaluate knowledge and skills
- Depth in C++
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: What factors do you consider when designing scalable systems?
- Answer aloud and timed: Can you describe a time when you had to make trade-offs in system design?
Behavioral Evaluation
reportedCandidates face behavioral questions to assess cultural fit within the company.
What to demonstrate
- Candidates face behavioral questions to assess cultural fit within the company
- Depth in C++
How to prepare
- Prepare three examples from your own work, each with a decision you made and an outcome you can quantify.
- Re-read the description of the behavioral evaluation above and write down what you would ask to confirm before it.
PracHub editorial advice for the preparation topics above.
Research the company
Familiarize yourself with Globus Medical's products, mission, and recent innovations. This knowledge will help you align your answers with the company's goals.
Practice coding challenges
If your role involves programming, practice common coding problems and be prepared for live coding interviews.
Prepare for behavioral questions
Reflect on past experiences and how they relate to the values and culture at Globus Medical. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your responses.
Show passion for healthcare
Demonstrating a genuine interest in medical technology and patient care can set you apart from other candidates.
Choose a category, try a prompt, then open its approach, worked solution or follow-up when you need it.
Write a function to reverse a string.
Write a function to reverse a string.
Approach
- Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
- Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
- Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
- State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.
Follow-up
- How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
- What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?
Collapse a redelivered event batch into per-aggregate high-water marks
You drain a batch of up to 5,000,000 events, each (aggregate_id BIGINT, aggregate_version INT, event_type, payload). The log guarantees order within one aggregate only; the batch merges 64 partitions, and a relay failover has redelivered a range, so an older version for an aggregate can appear after a newer one. Given a map of last_applied_version per aggregate, produce the events worth applying, at most one per (aggregate_id, version), plus the count discarded. Target O(n) time. State the memory for 2,000,000 distinct aggregates and what you do when it does not fit.
Approach
- One pass, one hash map from aggregate_id to the highest version kept, and a discard counter. An event whose version is at or below last_applied_version for its aggregate is dropped without further work, which is the whole reason the event carries its version rather than a delta. O(n) expected time, O(d) space in distinct aggregates.
- Keep the maximum, never the last occurrence. The redelivered range means the final appearance of an aggregate in the batch can be an older version than one seen earlier in the same batch, so last-wins applies stale state over newer state and the projection regresses with no error anywhere.
- Cost the memory instead of calling it large: an 8-byte key plus a 4-byte version is 12 bytes of payload, and an open-addressed table held at a 0.7 load factor costs roughly 17 bytes per entry before per-slot metadata, so 2,000,000 aggregates is tens of megabytes in a native layout and several times that in a runtime that boxes both key and value.
- If the distinct set exceeds memory, partition on hash(aggregate_id) mod P and reduce each partition independently. Every event for one aggregate hashes to the same partition, so the per-partition result is exact and the merge is concatenation rather than a second reduction.
Follow-up
- The payload is a patch rather than a snapshot, so applying only the highest version loses the intermediate changes. What changes in your reduction?
- How do you detect that version 7 arrived while version 6 was never delivered, and what should the consumer do about the gap?
Archive a resource graph without breaking live references or recursing
Resources reference other resources within a tenant; for the largest tenant the reference table holds up to 2,000,000 nodes and 8,000,000 edges. Archiving a resource must archive everything reachable from it that nothing outside the set still references, refuse when a live external referrer exists, and terminate when references form cycles, which they legitimately do. Produce the archive order and the refusal list, targeting O(V+E). Say what stops the traversal crossing a tenant boundary, and why recursion is the wrong control structure at this size.
Approach
- Load the subgraph with the tenant predicate on both endpoints of the edge, not only on the side you started from. Scoping the left table alone is the classic cross-tenant leak: one mis-entered edge then pulls another tenant's resources into the traversal and, worse, into the archive.
- Traverse iteratively with an explicit stack. A 2,000,000-node graph can hold a chain deep enough to exhaust a native stack in the low tens of thousands of frames, and that failure is a process crash rather than an error you can return.
- Treat cycles as data rather than corruption: compute strongly connected components with Tarjan in O(V+E) using its own explicit stack, then condense. The condensation is a DAG, so a topological order over it gives the archive order, and every member of a component archives in one transaction because no order within a cycle is valid.
- Decide refusals with reverse edges. A candidate is archivable only if every in-edge originates inside the candidate set, so build the transpose or count in-degrees restricted to the visited set, and emit each blocked resource with the id of the external referrer, which is the only part of the answer an operator can act on.
Follow-up
- The graph is read in one query and the archive writes a minute later. What can change in between, and how do you make the write safe?
- The candidate set is 400,000 resources. Is that one transaction, and if not, what does a half-finished archive look like to a reader?
How would you optimize a database query to improve performance?
How would you optimize a database query to improve performance?
Approach
- Name the grain you start from and join outward from it.
- Check whether any join is one-to-many before aggregating, or the sums inflate.
- Say which index the query would use, and what makes it unusable.
- Handle the rows that do not match: that is usually the actual question.
Follow-up
- How does the query change if that join becomes one-to-many?
- What happens to this when the table is ten times larger?
Explain why the owner filter ignores the listing index
The only index on resource is (tenant_id, status, updated_at DESC, resource_id DESC). A new endpoint returns one user's resources across all statuses, newest created first: WHERE tenant_id = $1 AND owner_user_id = $2 ORDER BY created_at DESC LIMIT 20. On a tenant with 2M rows it takes 900 ms and EXPLAIN shows a sort above a large scan. Explain precisely why the existing index cannot serve it, give the index that can, and state which of these the new index still will not help: owner_user_id alone across tenants; the same query ordered by updated_at. PostgreSQL 16.
Approach
- Separate the two jobs an index does. For filtering, a composite btree is seekable only on a left prefix, so with no predicate on status the scan can at best range over tenant_id and test owner_user_id per row; PostgreSQL 16 has no btree skip scan to jump the unconstrained column.
- For ordering, the index is sorted by (status, updated_at) within a tenant and not by created_at, so the LIMIT cannot stop early: every matching row is read and then sorted. That is the 'Sort Method: top-N heapsort' line, and it is why the plan reads 2M rows to answer with 20.
- Derive the replacement from the access path — equality, equality, then the ordering column: CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY ON resource (tenant_id, owner_user_id, created_at DESC). The scan seeks to the (tenant, owner) range and walks 20 entries in order, so the Sort node disappears along with the row-read.
- Treat INCLUDE (title, status) as conditional, not free. An index-only scan still visits the heap for any row whose page is not marked all-visible, so on a table taking 1.2k writes/second the win depends on autovacuum keeping the visibility map current, and the wider index costs more on every insert.
Follow-up
- 90% of rows are status='active'. Would a partial index WHERE status = 'active' change your answer, and for which of the three queries?
- A dashboard runs this for 40 owners in one page load. What changes about the design?
Explain the software development lifecycle.
Explain the software development lifecycle.
Approach
- Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
- State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
- Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
- Work from the requirement backwards to the design.
Follow-up
- What assumption would you test first?
- How would you know your answer was wrong?
What programming languages are you most comfortable with, and why?
What programming languages are you most comfortable with, and why?
Approach
- Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
- State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
- Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
- Work from the requirement backwards to the design.
Follow-up
- What assumption would you test first?
- How would you know your answer was wrong?
Describe a challenging technical problem you encountered and how you resolved it.
Describe a challenging technical problem you encountered and how you resolved it.
Approach
- Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
- State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
- Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
- Work from the requirement backwards to the design.
Follow-up
- What assumption would you test first?
- How would you know your answer was wrong?
How do you ensure code quality and maintainability?
How do you ensure code quality and maintainability?
Approach
- Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
- State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
- Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
- Work from the requirement backwards to the design.
Follow-up
- What assumption would you test first?
- How would you know your answer was wrong?
What methodologies do you have experience with (e.g., Agile, Waterfall)?
What methodologies do you have experience with (e.g., Agile, Waterfall)?
Approach
- Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
- State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
- Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
- Work from the requirement backwards to the design.
Follow-up
- What assumption would you test first?
- How would you know your answer was wrong?
How would you design a software system for a medical device?
How would you design a software system for a medical device?
Approach
- Fix the scope first: who calls this, how often, and what they do when it fails.
- Name the read and write paths separately; they rarely have the same bottleneck.
- Choose a partition key and say what query it makes expensive.
- State the consistency you need, and where you are willing to be stale.
Follow-up
- What breaks first when traffic grows ten times?
- How does this behave when that dependency is down for an hour?
What factors do you consider when designing scalable systems?
What factors do you consider when designing scalable systems?
Approach
- Fix the scope first: who calls this, how often, and what they do when it fails.
- Name the read and write paths separately; they rarely have the same bottleneck.
- Choose a partition key and say what query it makes expensive.
- State the consistency you need, and where you are willing to be stale.
Follow-up
- What breaks first when traffic grows ten times?
- How does this behave when that dependency is down for an hour?
If you were given a project with tight deadlines and limited resources, how would you approach it?
If you were given a project with tight deadlines and limited resources, how would you approach it?
Approach
- Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
- State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
- Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
- Work from the requirement backwards to the design.
Follow-up
- What assumption would you test first?
- How would you know your answer was wrong?
How would you address a situation where user feedback indicates a significant defect in the software?
How would you address a situation where user feedback indicates a significant defect in the software?
Approach
- Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
- State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
- Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
- Work from the requirement backwards to the design.
Follow-up
- What assumption would you test first?
- How would you know your answer was wrong?
One customer endpoint stalls deliveries to every other destination
The egress service delivers about 1.5k webhooks/second across 40,000 destinations, with a per-destination concurrency cap of 4 and a 10-second connect-plus-read timeout. Throughput falls to 300/second, queue depth climbs, and p99 delivery latency for unaffected destinations goes from 200 ms to minutes, while the error rate barely moves. One tenant holds 900 destination rows whose URLs share a hostname that now answers in 9.5 seconds. Explain the mechanism with the arithmetic, then give the containment in the order you would apply it.
Approach
- Look at saturation before errors. A flat error rate with collapsing throughput says nothing is failing, things are waiting, so the first signal to pull is in-flight request count or pool wait time rather than the error counter. This is the distinction that decides the whole investigation.
- Group in-flight work by resolved host, not by destination id. The cap is keyed per destination row, so 900 rows sharing one hostname buy 3,600 concurrent slots against a single host, each held for 9.5 seconds. The bulkhead was never a bulkhead for that host, and grouping by the wrong dimension is why the dashboard looked healthy.
- Do the arithmetic in both directions. Required concurrency is arrival rate times latency, so 1.5k/second at 200 ms needs about 300 in flight, which is entirely consumed by 3,600 slow slots; conversely whatever concurrency is left sustains rate equals concurrency divided by 9.5 seconds, which is the 300/second you are seeing. Matching both numbers is what promotes this from a plausible story to the mechanism.
- Explain why the circuit breaker never helped. It opens on consecutive failures, and a 9.5-second response inside a 10-second timeout is a success. Slow is not failing, so an error-rate breaker cannot see this; you need a slow-call ratio, a deadline propagated from the caller's remaining budget, or a concurrency limiter.
Follow-up
- The host recovers to 80 ms. How long does the queue take to drain, and what does the drain do to the recovered host?
- Where should the 10-second timeout number actually come from?
Built from the rounds and topics Globus Medical candidates report.
Prepare, practise & reflect
One practical outcome each day. Spend longer where you need it.
0 / 7 done01Map the Globus Medical loop
- Write out the reported sequence: Initial Screening, Phone Interviews, In-Person Interviews, Technical Evaluation, Behavioral Evaluation.
- For each round, write one sentence on what it is judging, from the description above, and mark the one you are least ready for.
Deliverable: A one-page map of the 5 reported rounds, with the weakest marked.
02Work C++
- Spend the session on C++, which Globus Medical candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in C++ and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in C++.
03Work Class design (OOP)
- Spend the session on Class design (OOP), which Globus Medical candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Class design (OOP) and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Class design (OOP).
04Work C++ basics / fundamentals
- Spend the session on C++ basics / fundamentals, which Globus Medical candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in C++ basics / fundamentals and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in C++ basics / fundamentals.
05Answer out loud: Technical / Domain Questions
- Answer aloud, timed: Explain the software development lifecycle.
- Answer aloud, timed: What programming languages are you most comfortable with, and why?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Technical / Domain Questions question(s), under time.
06Answer out loud: System Design / Architecture
- Answer aloud, timed: How would you design a software system for a medical device?
- Answer aloud, timed: What factors do you consider when designing scalable systems?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported System Design / Architecture question(s), under time.
07Answer out loud: Behavioral / Leadership
- Answer aloud, timed: Describe a situation where you had to work with a difficult team member. How did you handle it?
- Answer aloud, timed: What motivates you to work in the medical device industry?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Behavioral / Leadership question(s), under time.
Expand any day for tasks and deliverables. Your progress is saved on this device.
Behavioural rounds judge the decision you made and what it cost.
Can you describe a time when you had to make trade-offs in system design?
Can you describe a time when you had to make trade-offs in system design?
Approach
- Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
- State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
- Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
- Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.
Follow-up
- What would you do differently if you ran that again?
- How did you know your change caused the improvement?
Describe a situation where you had to work with a difficult team member. How did you handle it?
Describe a situation where you had to work with a difficult team member. How did you handle it?
Approach
- Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
- State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
- Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
- Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.
Follow-up
- What would you do differently if you ran that again?
- How did you know your change caused the improvement?
What motivates you to work in the medical device industry?
What motivates you to work in the medical device industry?
Approach
- Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
- State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
- Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
- Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.
Follow-up
- What would you do differently if you ran that again?
- How did you know your change caused the improvement?
How do you prioritize tasks when managing multiple projects?
How do you prioritize tasks when managing multiple projects?
Approach
- Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
- State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
- Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
- Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.
Follow-up
- What would you do differently if you ran that again?
- How did you know your change caused the improvement?
- 01
Can you describe a time when you had to make trade-offs in system design?
- 02
Describe a situation where you had to work with a difficult team member. How did you handle it?
- 03
What motivates you to work in the medical device industry?
- 04
How do you prioritize tasks when managing multiple projects?
What is the typical interview difficulty for this position?
The interviews can vary in difficulty but generally range from average to difficult, particularly for technical assessments and system design discussions. Candidates should prepare thoroughly to demonstrate their expertise.
Globus Medical Software Engineer candidate reports ↗How long does the interview process usually take?
The timeline can vary, but candidates typically experience a multi-week process from the initial screening to the final interview, with several rounds of interviews along the way.
Globus Medical Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What is the company culture like at Globus Medical?
Globus Medical promotes a culture of collaboration and innovation, with a strong focus on improving patient outcomes. Candidates should expect a supportive environment where teamwork is valued.
Globus Medical Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What differentiates successful candidates?
Successful candidates are those who not only possess strong technical skills but also demonstrate adaptability, effective communication, and a passion for the medical device industry.
Globus Medical Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Is remote work an option at Globus Medical?
While the company has historically favored in-office work, policies may vary by team and role. Candidates should inquire about specific expectations during the interview process.
Globus Medical Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What topics does Globus Medical test in interviews?
Globus Medical interviews most often cover SQL, Process Improvement Methodologies, Pricing Analysis, Inventory Management, and Business Intelligence (BI) & Reporting. The exact emphasis depends on the specific role you apply for.
Globus Medical Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Sources & methodology 3 sources ↗
No official company page is cited. Rounds and questions come from candidate reports and PracHub editorial material; each source shows the date it was read.
- 01Globus Medical Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
Company-reported rounds, questions and FAQ.
Candidate reports · Accessed 2026-09-22 - 02PracHub Software Engineer practice ↗
PracHub practice material, not company-reported.
PracHub page · Accessed 2026-09-22 - 03PracHub preparation framework ↗
PracHub preparation guidance.
PracHub page · Accessed 2026-09-22
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