As a Software Engineer at Nakupuna Companies, you play a vital role in designing, developing, and maintaining mission-critical applications that support federal, defense, and enterprise clients. Because Nakupuna Companies operates as a family of Native Hawaiian Organization (NHO) owned businesses, our engineering teams are dedicated to delivering high-impact, culturally conscious, and highly secure technology solutions. Your work directly influences how government agencies manage data, streamline operations, and safeguard sensitive information. In this role, you will work across a diverse portfolio of technologies, ranging from enterprise platforms like SharePoint and PeopleSoft to custom application development. You will be responsible for translating complex client requirements into scalable, secure, and maintainable software systems. Whether you are modernizing legacy systems for defense clients or building custom workflows for civilian agencies, your contributions ensure the operational readiness and efficiency of organizations that serve the public interest. This position demands a balance of deep technical expertise and strong collaborative skills. You will find yourself working closely with cross-functional teams, including product owners, system administrators, and client stakeholders. Success in this role requires adaptability, a commitment to high-quality code, and the ability to navigate the unique compliance and security landscapes of federal contracting.
Recruiter Screen
reportedInitial discussion about your background, career goals, and role requirements.
What to demonstrate
- Initial discussion about your background, career goals, and role requirements
- Depth in SharePoint Development
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.
Technical Evaluations
reportedEngage in technical assessments which may include chats with platform experts or formal panel interviews.
What to demonstrate
- Engage in technical assessments which may include chats with platform experts or formal panel interviews
- Depth in SharePoint Development
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: Describe your experience with automated workflows inside SharePoint and how you optimize them for performance and reliability.
- Answer aloud and timed: What are the primary considerations when migrating legacy enterprise data to a modern cloud-hosted platform?
PracHub editorial advice for the preparation topics above.
Prepare for structured formats
Be ready for interviews that may feel more structured or document-driven than standard commercial tech interviews. Keep your answers organized and focused.
Highlight security and compliance
Since we serve federal and defense clients, mentioning your familiarity with secure coding practices, DISA STIGs, or NIST guidelines can set you apart.
Demonstrate active listening
Even if an interviewer appears rushed, maintain high engagement, listen carefully to their questions, and clarify requirements before diving into your answers.
Be platform-ready
If you are interviewing for a specialized role like SharePoint Developer, ensure you are up to date on the latest platform updates, cloud integrations, and modern development frameworks.
Choose a category, try a prompt, then open its approach, worked solution or follow-up when you need it.
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?
Find overlapping job attempts and peak concurrency from lease records
A day of job_run history yields about 50,000,000 attempt records: (job_run_id, job_type, attempt, started_at, finished_at which is NULL when the worker died, lease_expires_at). Leases expire on a clock, so a job that outran its lease ran twice. Produce (a) every job_run_id whose attempts overlapped in wall-clock time and (b) the peak number of simultaneously running attempts per job_type with the minute it occurred. Target O(n log n). State how you treat a NULL finished_at and what clock skew does to your answer.
Approach
- Define the interval before sorting anything: an attempt occupies [started_at, COALESCE(finished_at, lease_expires_at)). finished_at is observed and lease_expires_at is only a promise, so every attempt without a finish contributes an estimate and the whole result is a lower bound on overlap rather than an exact count.
- For peak concurrency, sweep: emit 2n endpoints, sort by (timestamp, kind) with ends ordered before starts at equal timestamps, then walk the sequence maintaining a counter per job_type and record each type's maximum with its timestamp. O(n log n) dominated by the sort, O(n) space, or O(1) extra if the sort is external and the walk streams.
- For overlap detection, do not compare attempts pairwise. A single global sort by (job_run_id, started_at) gives both the grouping and the order; within a group, keep the maximum end seen so far and report an overlap exactly when the next start is less than that running maximum, which is one linear pass after the sort.
- Half-open intervals matter and are easy to get wrong: with closed intervals an attempt ending at the same millisecond another begins reads as concurrency two, and across 50,000,000 records that artefact swamps the real signal.
Follow-up
- A handler is not idempotent and you have found 400 overlapping jobs. Which of them actually caused damage, and what would you query to find out?
- Peak concurrency for one job_type is 4 against a configured cap of 4. Is the cap working, or is the data hiding attempts that never started?
Diff a projection against the primary without per-row point reads
The listing projection has drifted and some rows show a stale version. The primary holds 40,000,000 resource rows across 12,000 tenants while serving 1,200 writes and 14,000 reads per second. The obvious repair, reading each resource row and comparing its version against the projection, is correct and would eventually finish. Explain precisely why it is unacceptable here, then give a diff that finds the differing rows, state its complexity, and make it safe to run against a live primary. Replication lag is usually under 100 ms and is not bounded.
Approach
- Quantify the naive cost rather than calling it slow: 40,000,000 point reads at even 0.5 ms each is over five hours serialised, and the only lever is concurrency, which is exactly what you cannot spend. The primary's pool is sized for the write path, and 40,000,000 random reads evict the buffer cache that sustains the 85 percent cache hit rate, so the audit degrades the system it is auditing.
- Replace random access with one ordered pass per side. Both sides can be read in (tenant_id, resource_id) order, which is a sequential scan on each and a merge join in O(n) time and O(1) memory. For a dense diff that is the whole answer, and it reads the primary once instead of 40,000,000 times.
- For the expected sparse case, compare range hashes instead of rows: partition the key space, compute per range an order-independent aggregate over hash(resource_id, version), compare aggregates, and descend only into ranges that differ. With d differing rows and branching factor B, at most d ranges mismatch per level, so the drill-down examines O(d log_B(n/d)) ranges and reads full rows only in mismatching leaves.
- Aggregate with a sum modulo 2^64 or a multiset hash, never XOR. XOR is order-independent but self-cancelling, so two rows wrong in the same way, or a row duplicated on one side, leave the range aggregate matching and the range is declared clean.
Follow-up
- The diff reports 900 stale rows. How do you decide between patching those rows and rebuilding the projection from resource_revision?
- Same job, but the projection lives in a search index that cannot be scanned in key order. What changes?
What strategies do you use to ensure your code is secure against common vulnerabilities like SQL injection and
What strategies do you use to ensure your code is secure against common vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS)?
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?
Write the update path that detects a concurrent edit
resource carries version INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 1. resource_revision holds revision_id, resource_id, version, actor_user_id, change_kind, patch JSONB, request_id, created_at with UNIQUE (resource_id, version). outbox_event holds aggregate_type, aggregate_id, aggregate_version, event_type, payload, status. A PUT carries the version the client read. Write the exact statements for the single transaction that applies the edit, records the revision and enqueues 'resource.updated', and give the handler's branch on zero affected rows. Then say what PostgreSQL 16 does under READ COMMITTED when two of these updates hit one row at once.
Approach
- One transaction, three writes, no network call inside it: UPDATE resource SET title = $3, version = version + 1, updated_at = now() WHERE resource_id = $1 AND tenant_id = $4 AND version = $2; then INSERT the resource_revision row at version $2 + 1; then INSERT the outbox_event row at the same aggregate_version. The event goes to a table rather than a broker because no transaction spans both.
- Branch on the affected-row count before doing anything else. Zero has three causes — stale version, wrong tenant, row gone — so re-read once and map to 409 carrying the current version, or 404 for an id outside the caller's tenant, which also stops the endpoint confirming that another tenant's id exists.
- State the engine behaviour instead of assuming it. Under READ COMMITTED the second UPDATE blocks on the row lock, and when the first commits PostgreSQL re-evaluates the WHERE clause against the newly committed row, so the version predicate now fails and the statement reports zero rows. Under REPEATABLE READ the identical collision raises SQLSTATE 40001 instead, so the handler must fold both shapes into one conflict response.
- Keep UNIQUE (resource_id, version) even though the predicate already serialises writers. It is what makes a lost update unwritable if any other path ever reaches the revision table, and it converts a logic bug into 23505 rather than into a silently missing history row.
Follow-up
- A client sends the version it read ten minutes ago and the resource has moved three versions. What is in your 409 so it can resolve the conflict without a full re-fetch?
- Two editors, two disjoint fields, no overlap. Does your answer still refuse the second write, and should it?
Explain the difference between custom SPFx (SharePoint Framework) web parts and extensions, and describe when
Explain the difference between custom SPFx (SharePoint Framework) web parts and extensions, and describe when you would use each.
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 manage state and data synchronization when integrating PeopleSoft with external third-party systems
How do you manage state and data synchronization when integrating PeopleSoft with external third-party systems?
Approach
- Say who the caller is and what they do when the call fails halfway.
- Define the identity of a request so a retry cannot double-apply it.
- Separate accepted, pending, failed and confirmed; they are different facts.
- Design the error taxonomy before the success shape; callers branch on it.
Follow-up
- What happens if the caller retries after a timeout?
- How does a client discover it is on an old version of this contract?
What are the primary considerations when migrating legacy enterprise data to a modern cloud-hosted platform?
What are the primary considerations when migrating legacy enterprise data to a modern cloud-hosted platform?
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?
Walk me through how you would design a RESTful API that needs to handle high-volume, asynchronous data process
Walk me through how you would design a RESTful API that needs to handle high-volume, asynchronous data processing.
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?
Explain the principles of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and how you apply them to write clean, maintainabl
Explain the principles of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and how you apply them to write clean, maintainable code.
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?
How do you approach debugging a memory leak in a production environment?
How do you approach debugging a memory leak in a production environment?
Approach
- Establish what changed and when, before forming any theory.
- Pick a bisection that eliminates candidates whichever way it turns out.
- Check the instrumentation before believing the symptom.
- Separate the trigger from the cause; the deploy is rarely the bug.
Follow-up
- What would you look at first, and what would it rule out?
- How would you tell a cause from a coincidence here?
Built from the rounds and topics Nakupuna Companies candidates report.
Prepare, practise & reflect
One practical outcome each day. Spend longer where you need it.
0 / 7 done01Map the Nakupuna Companies loop
- Write out the reported sequence: Recruiter Screen, Technical Evaluations.
- 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 2 reported rounds, with the weakest marked.
02Work SharePoint Development
- Spend the session on SharePoint Development, which Nakupuna Companies candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in SharePoint Development and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in SharePoint Development.
03Work ERP / PeopleSoft Ecosystem
- Spend the session on ERP / PeopleSoft Ecosystem, which Nakupuna Companies candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in ERP / PeopleSoft Ecosystem and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in ERP / PeopleSoft Ecosystem.
04Work Microsoft SharePoint Platform
- Spend the session on Microsoft SharePoint Platform, which Nakupuna Companies candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Microsoft SharePoint Platform and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Microsoft SharePoint Platform.
05Answer out loud: Enterprise Platforms & Customization
- Answer aloud, timed: Explain the difference between custom SPFx (SharePoint Framework) web parts and extensions, and describe when you would use each.
- Answer aloud, timed: How do you manage state and data synchronization when integrating PeopleSoft with external third-party systems?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Enterprise Platforms & Customization question(s), under time.
06Answer out loud: Core Software Engineering & Architecture
- Answer aloud, timed: Walk me through how you would design a RESTful API that needs to handle high-volume, asynchronous data processing.
- Answer aloud, timed: How do you approach debugging a memory leak in a production environment?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Core Software Engineering & Architecture question(s), under time.
07Answer out loud: Behavioral & Client Delivery
- Answer aloud, timed: Tell me about a time you had to work with a highly structured or rigid set of technical requirements. How did you ensure compliance while delivering a high-quality product?
- Answer aloud, timed: Describe a situation where you had to explain a complex technical concept to a non-technical client or stakeholder.
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Behavioral & Client Delivery 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.
Describe your experience with automated workflows inside SharePoint and how you optimize them for performance
Describe your experience with automated workflows inside SharePoint and how you optimize them for performance and reliability.
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?
Tell me about a time you had to work with a highly structured or rigid set of technical requirements. How did
Tell me about a time you had to work with a highly structured or rigid set of technical requirements. How did you ensure compliance while delivering a high-quality product?
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 explain a complex technical concept to a non-technical client or stakeho
Describe a situation where you had to explain a complex technical concept to a non-technical client or stakeholder.
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 handle a situation where a project's requirements change mid-sprint or late in the development cycl
How do you handle a situation where a project's requirements change mid-sprint or late in the development cycle?
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?
Share an experience where you had to quickly learn a new technology or platform to meet a project deadline.
Share an experience where you had to quickly learn a new technology or platform to meet a project deadline.
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
Describe your experience with automated workflows inside SharePoint and how you optimize them for performance and reliability.
- 02
Tell me about a time you had to work with a highly structured or rigid set of technical requirements. How did you ensure compliance while delivering a high-quality product?
- 03
Describe a situation where you had to explain a complex technical concept to a non-technical client or stakeholder.
- 04
How do you handle a situation where a project's requirements change mid-sprint or late in the development cycle?
How difficult are the technical interviews at Nakupuna Companies?
The difficulty is generally rated as average, but it highly depends on your preparation. The questions focus on practical, real-world application of your skills rather than abstract algorithmic puzzles.
Nakupuna Companies Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What should I do if my interviewer seems to be following a highly rigid script?
Remain professional, patient, and precise. Deliver clear, structured answers that demonstrate your expertise, and look for opportunities to naturally weave in your relevant experiences when answering their questions.
Nakupuna Companies Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Are these software engineering roles remote or on-site?
Many of our software development positions are based out of Arlington, VA, and offer hybrid or remote flexibility depending on the specific government contract requirements. Always clarify the location expectations with your recruiter early in the process.
Nakupuna Companies Software Engineer candidate reports ↗How can I stand out during the interview process?
Show a strong alignment with our mission of supporting federal clients and Native Hawaiian communities. Highlight your experience navigating compliance, security protocols, and client-facing communication.
Nakupuna Companies Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What topics does Nakupuna Companies test in interviews?
Nakupuna Companies interviews most often cover Program Management, Stakeholder Management, Risk Management, Requirements Management, and Issue Management. The exact emphasis depends on the specific role you apply for.
Nakupuna Companies 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.
- 01Nakupuna Companies 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
Explore related engineering environments and compare the preparation focus.
Vercel Software Engineer Interview Guide
Debugging practice for Vercel software engineer prep built on a reproduction you trust, narrowing to the smallest failing input, and changing one variable per run so the result stays attributable.
Together Ai Software Engineer Interview Guide
Failure-handling practice for Together Ai software engineer candidates: requests whose outcome a timeout leaves unknown, where a retry is safe, and deduplicating at the receiver instead of assuming exactly-once delivery.
Lambda Software Engineer Interview Guide
Failure-handling practice for Lambda software engineer candidates: requests whose outcome a timeout leaves unknown, where a retry is safe, and deduplicating at the receiver instead of assuming exactly-once delivery.
CoreWeave Software Engineer Interview Guide
Failure-handling practice for CoreWeave software engineer candidates: requests whose outcome a timeout leaves unknown, where a retry is safe, and deduplicating at the receiver instead of assuming exactly-once delivery.