Pacific Gas and Electric · Software Engineer
Updated · 2026-10-02

Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer
Interview Guide

THE 60-SECOND BRIEF

A Software Engineer at Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) plays a critical role in building, maintaining, and modernizing the digital infrastructure that powers northern and central California. Unlike standard tech companies, software engineering here sits at the vital intersection of advanced software development and critical physical infrastructure. The applications and systems you build, integrate, and support directly impact the safety, reliability, and clean energy delivery for over 16 million people. In this role, you will work on complex, high-impact problem spaces that range from grid modernization and asset management to real-time outage tracking and geographic information systems (GIS).

This guide is scoped to a Software Engineer candidate at Pacific Gas and Electric.

Pacific Gas and Electric candidates report 5 rounds over 4-6 weeks. The stages below are what candidates describe, not a published process.

STAR Method (Interview Response Framework)Behavioral InterviewingCoding / Programming Exercises

24 min read

Browse Software Engineer questions

See the practice prompts

19Practice promptsAcross five skill areas

A Software Engineer at Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) plays a critical role in building, maintaining, and modernizing the digital infrastructure that powers northern and central California. Unlike standard tech companies, software engineering here sits at the vital intersection of advanced software development and critical physical infrastructure. The applications and systems you build, integrate, and support directly impact the safety, reliability, and clean energy delivery for over 16 million people. In this role, you will work on complex, high-impact problem spaces that range from grid modernization and asset management to real-time outage tracking and geographic information systems (GIS). You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including electrical engineers, grid operators, data scientists, and project managers, to translate physical utility challenges into scalable software solutions. Your work ensures that the control systems, automation scripts, and enterprise applications running PG&E’s grid remain secure, resilient, and highly available. Preparing for this position requires an understanding that software quality at PG&E is directly tied to operational safety and public welfare. You are not just writing code; you are engineering systems where reliability is measured in continuous power delivery and community safety.

01

Online Application

reported

Submit your application and complete a screening questionnaire.

What to demonstrate

  • Submit your application and complete a screening questionnaire
  • Depth in STAR Method (Interview Response Framework)

How to prepare

  • Answer aloud and timed: Describe a situation where a project or task did not turn out as planned. What did you do, and what was the outcome?
  • Answer aloud and timed: Tell me about a time when you and a coworker did not see eye-to-eye. How did you resolve the conflict and reach a conclusion?
Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
02

Pre-employment Tests

reported

Complete any required pre-employment tests, such as the Physical Test Battery or Technical Test.

What to demonstrate

  • Complete any required pre-employment tests, such as the Physical Test Battery or Technical Test
  • Depth in STAR Method (Interview Response Framework)

How to prepare

  • Answer aloud and timed: Describe a time when you realized you could not meet an established deadline. How did you handle the situation with your team and stakeholders?
  • Answer aloud and timed: Give an example of a difficult interaction you had with a customer or external stakeholder and how you resolved it.
Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
03

Panel Interview

reported

Participate in a virtual or on-site panel interview with two to four interviewers.

What to demonstrate

  • Participate in a virtual or on-site panel interview with two to four interviewers
  • Depth in STAR Method (Interview Response Framework)

How to prepare

  • Answer aloud and timed: Tell me about a time you had to quickly adapt to a major change in project requirements or team structure.
  • Answer aloud and timed: Describe a safety issue or risk you identified in a past role and the steps you took to remedy it.
Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
04

Behavioral and Technical Questions

reported

Answer pre-determined behavioral and technical questions during the panel interview.

What to demonstrate

  • Answer pre-determined behavioral and technical questions during the panel interview
  • Depth in STAR Method (Interview Response Framework)

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 and technical questions above and write down what you would ask to confirm before it.
Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
05

Candidate Questions

reported

Conclude the panel interview by asking questions about the team and role expectations.

What to demonstrate

  • Conclude the panel interview by asking questions about the team and role expectations
  • Depth in STAR Method (Interview Response Framework)

How to prepare

  • Answer aloud and timed: What are your expectations of a company’s safety culture, and how do you contribute to it daily?
  • Answer aloud and timed: How would you design, build, and deploy an application across multiple clients in a secure Windows environment?
Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗

PracHub editorial advice for the preparation topics above.

01

Do not skip preparing for the behavioral portion

Many technically brilliant candidates fail the PG&E interview because they did not structure their answers using the STAR format or failed to demonstrate a safety-first mindset.

02

Prepare a Safety Message

Since safety is PG&E's top priority, starting your panel interview with a brief, professional safety message (e.g., a tip on digital security, ergonomic workspace setup, or emergency preparedness) shows immediate cultural alignment.

03

Know Your Resume in Detail

The panel will have your resume in front of them and may ask you to explain specific design decisions, technologies used, or project outcomes from your past roles. Be ready to speak to everything you have listed.

04

Expect a Quiet Panel

PG&E interviewers take detailed notes during your responses to ensure accurate scoring. Do not be discouraged if they do not provide immediate feedback or conversational cues; maintain your confidence and deliver structured answers.

Choose a category, try a prompt, then open its approach, worked solution or follow-up when you need it.

8 technical prompts0 include a worked solution

Track a rolling failure rate per destination for circuit decisions

easy
sliding windowring buffercircuit breaker

The egress service delivers about 1,500 webhooks per second across roughly 40,000 destinations, each call bounded by a 10 second timeout. Maintain, per destination, the failure rate over the trailing 60 seconds so a caller can ask before dispatch whether the circuit should open. Attempts arrive as (destination_id, finished_at_ms, outcome). Requirement: amortised O(1) per attempt, with total memory bounded by the destination count rather than by traffic. Give the structure, its exact memory, and the rule that stops a destination with three attempts from opening a circuit.

Approach
  1. Name the exact-deque version and then reject it as the default. Holding timestamps and advancing a tail pointer past anything older than now minus 60 seconds is a correct two-pointer window at amortised O(1) per attempt, but its memory tracks in-window traffic, so one destination in a retry storm holds hundreds of thousands of entries while thousands of quiet destinations hold none.
  2. Use a ring of 60 one-second buckets per destination, each bucket a pair of counters for attempts and failures. On an attempt, advance the ring by the elapsed whole seconds, zeroing at most min(elapsed, 60) buckets, then increment the head. That is amortised O(1) with a fixed footprint per destination.
  3. State the footprint: 60 buckets times two 4-byte counters is 480 bytes of payload per destination, so 40,000 destinations is roughly 20 to 25 MB with per-entry overhead, bounded by the catalogue rather than by the rate. The cost is granularity, since the oldest bucket ages out in whole seconds, which is far tighter than the decision needs.
  4. Require a minimum sample before the circuit may open. A destination with three attempts and three failures reads as 100 percent and is not evidence; a floor of roughly 20 attempts in the window makes the ratio meaningful, and below that floor use a run of consecutive failures as the trigger instead.
Follow-up
  • The fleet is 30 instances and each sees roughly a thirtieth of a destination's traffic. Where does the rate actually live, and what does a per-instance answer get wrong?
  • A destination answers in 9.5 seconds and succeeds. It is not failing but it is consuming your per-destination concurrency. What signal should open the circuit here?

Identify the heaviest tenants in a five-minute window under memory pressure

medium
top-kheavy hittersstreaming

The edge service handles about 3,000 requests per second across roughly 50,000 tenants, peaking near 9,000. Expose the 50 heaviest tenants by request count over the trailing five minutes so limits can be tightened before one tenant's backfill starves the fleet. You may not retain five minutes of raw records. Give the exact solution and its memory, then the bounded-memory approximation with its error stated as a formula, and say which you would ship and at what tenant cardinality that choice changes.

Approach
  1. Do the exact version first, because it is affordable at this cardinality: a ring of 300 one-second counters per tenant, advanced lazily, is 1,200 bytes of counters per tenant and roughly 60 to 90 MB for 50,000 tenants with overhead. Carry a running total and subtract the bucket you overwrite so a window read is O(1) rather than 300 adds.
  2. Extract the top 50 with a size-k min-heap over the tenant sums: O(d log k) for d tenants, against O(d log d) to sort them all. Maintaining the heap continuously instead of on query requires a tenant-to-heap-index map, because incrementing a count already inside the heap means sifting from a known position, and without that map you rebuild the heap on every request.
  3. State the approximation precisely rather than gesturing at sketches. Misra-Gries with m counters retains every item whose true count exceeds N/(m+1), and each retained count underestimates the truth by at most N/(m+1). With m = 1,000 and N = 900,000 requests in the window the error is roughly 900 requests, which is fine for spotting a tenant sending 50,000 and useless for ranking two tenants 200 apart.
  4. Say what breaks when the window slides: Misra-Gries and Space-Saving are insert-only and cannot be decremented as records age out. The workable construction is one summary per sub-window, say ten seconds, with 30 summaries merged at query time, and the merged error is the sum of the per-summary errors, so the bound degrades linearly in the number of sub-windows.
Follow-up
  • The heaviest tenant is heavy because of one export job rather than user traffic. Should the limiter treat those as the same tenant?
  • Two tenants sit tied at the boundary of the top 50. Does your answer flap, and does the flapping matter?

Collapse a redelivered event batch into per-aggregate high-water marks

easy
hashingat-least-onceaggregation

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
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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?

Built from the rounds and topics Pacific Gas and Electric candidates report.

Small steps. Visible outcomes.0 / 7 completed
ONE WEEK · YOUR PACE

Prepare, practise & reflect

One practical outcome each day. Spend longer where you need it.

0 / 7 done
01Map the Pacific Gas and Electric loop
  • Write out the reported sequence: Online Application, Pre-employment Tests, Panel Interview, Behavioral and Technical Questions, Candidate Questions.
  • 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 STAR Method (Interview Response Framework)
  • Spend the session on STAR Method (Interview Response Framework), which Pacific Gas and Electric candidates report being tested on.
  • Write one worked example in STAR Method (Interview Response Framework) and time yourself on it.

Deliverable: One timed worked example in STAR Method (Interview Response Framework).

03Work Behavioral Interviewing
  • Spend the session on Behavioral Interviewing, which Pacific Gas and Electric candidates report being tested on.
  • Write one worked example in Behavioral Interviewing and time yourself on it.

Deliverable: One timed worked example in Behavioral Interviewing.

04Work Coding / Programming Exercises
  • Spend the session on Coding / Programming Exercises, which Pacific Gas and Electric candidates report being tested on.
  • Write one worked example in Coding / Programming Exercises and time yourself on it.

Deliverable: One timed worked example in Coding / Programming Exercises.

05Answer out loud: Behavioral & STAR Questions
  • Answer aloud, timed: Describe a situation where a project or task did not turn out as planned. What did you do, and what was the outcome?
  • Answer aloud, timed: Tell me about a time when you and a coworker did not see eye-to-eye. How did you resolve the conflict and reach a conclusion?

Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Behavioral & STAR Questions question(s), under time.

06Answer out loud: Safety & Company Values
  • Answer aloud, timed: Describe a safety issue or risk you identified in a past role and the steps you took to remedy it.
  • Answer aloud, timed: Why do you want to work for Pacific Gas and Electric, and how do you see yourself fitting into our safety-first culture?

Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Safety & Company Values question(s), under time.

07Answer out loud: Technical, Infrastructure & Systems Engineering
  • Answer aloud, timed: How would you design, build, and deploy an application across multiple clients in a secure Windows environment?
  • Answer aloud, timed: Explain your experience with server environments, client operating systems, and writing automation scripts to streamline operations.

Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Technical, Infrastructure & Systems Engineering 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 a situation where a project or task did not turn out as planned. What did you do, and what was the ou

medium
Behavioral & STAR Questions

Describe a situation where a project or task did not turn out as planned. What did you do, and what was the outcome?

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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 when you and a coworker did not see eye-to-eye. How did you resolve the conflict and reac

medium
Behavioral & STAR Questions

Tell me about a time when you and a coworker did not see eye-to-eye. How did you resolve the conflict and reach a conclusion?

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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 time when you realized you could not meet an established deadline. How did you handle the situation

medium
Behavioral & STAR Questions

Describe a time when you realized you could not meet an established deadline. How did you handle the situation with your team and stakeholders?

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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?

Give an example of a difficult interaction you had with a customer or external stakeholder and how you resolve

medium
Behavioral & STAR Questions

Give an example of a difficult interaction you had with a customer or external stakeholder and how you resolved it.

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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 quickly adapt to a major change in project requirements or team structure.

medium
Behavioral & STAR Questions

Tell me about a time you had to quickly adapt to a major change in project requirements or team structure.

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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 safety issue or risk you identified in a past role and the steps you took to remedy it.

medium
Safety & Company Values

Describe a safety issue or risk you identified in a past role and the steps you took to remedy it.

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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?

Why do you want to work for Pacific Gas and Electric, and how do you see yourself fitting into our safety-firs

medium
Safety & Company Values

Why do you want to work for Pacific Gas and Electric, and how do you see yourself fitting into our safety-first culture?

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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 safety and quality when you are under intense pressure to deliver a software release?

medium
Safety & Company Values

How do you prioritize safety and quality when you are under intense pressure to deliver a software release?

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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 are your expectations of a company’s safety culture, and how do you contribute to it daily?

medium
Safety & Company Values

What are your expectations of a company’s safety culture, and how do you contribute to it daily?

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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?

Explain your experience with server environments, client operating systems, and writing automation scripts to

medium
Technical, Infrastructure & Systems Engi

Explain your experience with server environments, client operating systems, and writing automation scripts to streamline operations.

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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 your experience with database management, load flow analysis, or integrating software with physical h

medium
Technical, Infrastructure & Systems Engi

Describe your experience with database management, load flow analysis, or integrating software with physical hardware like PLCs or LabVIEW systems.

Approach
  1. Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
  2. State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
  3. Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
  4. 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 a situation where a project or task did not turn out as planned. What did you do, and what was the outcome?

  • 02

    Tell me about a time when you and a coworker did not see eye-to-eye. How did you resolve the conflict and reach a conclusion?

  • 03

    Describe a time when you realized you could not meet an established deadline. How did you handle the situation with your team and stakeholders?

  • 04

    Give an example of a difficult interaction you had with a customer or external stakeholder and how you resolved it.

PracHub preparation framework ↗
How difficult are the technical interviews compared to typical Silicon Valley tech companies?

The technical interviews at PG&E tend to focus more on practical systems engineering, architecture, scripting, and logical problem-solving rather than highly abstract, LeetCode-style algorithm puzzles. While the questions are highly practical, they are thorough and require a deep understanding of how software runs in secure, enterprise environments.

Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
How important is the STAR method during the interview?

It is absolutely critical. PG&E uses a highly standardized behavioral grading system. If you do not structure your behavioral answers clearly using the Situation, Task, Action, and Result format, the interviewers will struggle to score your responses highly, regardless of how impressive your experience is.

Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
What is the company culture like for software engineers?

The culture is highly collaborative, mission-driven, and focused on public safety and service reliability. Engineers at PG&E take great pride in knowing their work directly impacts the daily lives of millions of Californians. The environment is structured, highly regulated, and prioritizes methodical quality over rushing products to market.

Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
Does PG&E offer remote or hybrid work options for software engineers?

Yes, many software engineering teams at PG&E operate under hybrid work models, combining remote work days with scheduled collaborative days at key office locations, such as Oakland, San Ramon, or Sacramento. Specific arrangements depend on the team and project requirements.

Pacific Gas and Electric Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
What topics does Pacific Gas and Electric test in interviews?

Pacific Gas and Electric interviews most often cover Behavioral Interviewing, Communication Skills, Panel Interviewing, Data Analysis, and Data-Driven Decision Making. The exact emphasis depends on the specific role you apply for.

Pacific Gas and Electric 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.