As a Software Engineer at Simplesurance, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the insurtech industry. Simplesurance provides innovative, cross-border transactional insurance integration solutions for major e-commerce platforms and distributors worldwide. Your primary mission is to design, build, and maintain high-throughput, low-latency APIs and microservices that seamlessly embed insurance products directly into the checkout funnels of global digital retailers. The systems you build must handle massive transaction volumes with absolute reliability, making your engineering decisions highly impactful to both the business and millions of end-users. You will work in an agile, highly collaborative environment where clean architecture, automated testing, and domain-driven design are deeply valued. The core backend stack is heavily centered around Go (Golang), and the engineering culture is deeply rooted in modern cloud-native practices, continuous delivery, and active participation in the open-source and local developer communities. Success in this role requires not only exceptional technical capabilities but also a strong product-oriented mindset. You will collaborate closely with product managers, frontend engineers, and cross-functional leads to translate complex business requirements into elegant, maintainable code.
HR Screening Call
reportedInitial call focused on your background, career goals, and cultural alignment.
What to demonstrate
- Initial call focused on your background, career goals, and cultural alignment
- Depth in Go (Golang)
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 Screening
reportedDiscussion with a hiring manager about your architectural experience.
What to demonstrate
- Discussion with a hiring manager about your architectural experience
- Depth in Go (Golang)
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: How do you handle concurrency safely in your applications, and what mechanisms do you use to prevent race conditions?
- Answer aloud and timed: Explain the role of unit testing in your development workflow and how you structure tests for complex business logic.
Take-Home Coding Challenge
reportedComplete a coding challenge in a low-pressure environment with a generous completion window.
What to demonstrate
- Complete a coding challenge in a low-pressure environment with a generous completion window
- Depth in Go (Golang)
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: What are some common design patterns you apply to keep your codebase modular and easy to extend over time?
- Answer aloud and timed: How do you accurately extract the client's real IP address from an incoming HTTP request when the application is behind multiple layers of reverse proxies or load balancers?
Technical Interview
reportedDeep-dive technical interview with the engineering team to review your code.
What to demonstrate
- Deep-dive technical interview with the engineering team to review your code
- Depth in Go (Golang)
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: What is your strategy for implementing a robust, thread-safe rate limiter to protect an API from abuse?
- Answer aloud and timed: How do you design an HTTP request counter that can scale efficiently under high concurrency?
Product-Focused Round
reportedAssessment of your cross-functional collaboration skills.
What to demonstrate
- Assessment of your cross-functional collaboration skills
- Depth in Go (Golang)
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: What are the trade-offs of using
X-Forwarded-Forheaders for tracking client requests, and how do you mitigate security risks like header spoofing? - Answer aloud and timed: How do you design APIs that maintain backward compatibility while supporting rapid product iterations?
Final Interview Day
reportedExtend your initial homework assignment with new features in real-time and discuss with engineering leads.
What to demonstrate
- Extend your initial homework assignment with new features in real-time and discuss with engineering leads
- Depth in Go (Golang)
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: Describe a time when project requirements changed mid-cycle. How did you adapt your technical approach, and how did you communicate this to your stakeholders?
- Answer aloud and timed: How do you collaborate with Product Owners to refine technical requirements and define the scope of a feature?
PracHub editorial advice for the preparation topics above.
Prepare for the Code Extension
Treat your take-home assignment as the foundation for your future work. Write it with the expectation that you will need to add new features to it during a live session. Keep your classes, packages, and functions highly decoupled.
Master HTTP Proxy Headers
Make sure you thoroughly understand how HTTP headers like X-Forwarded-For, X-Real-IP, and proxy chains work. Be ready to explain how you would securely and accurately parse these headers to extract a client's true IP address.
Think Out Loud
During the live coding and technical discussions, continuously communicate your thought process. If you are making a temporary trade-off to save time, state it explicitly and explain how you would write it in a production environment.
Clarify Expectations Early
Ensure you align with the recruitment team on your experience level, role expectations, and salary requirements during your initial HR screening to ensure mutual alignment throughout the multi-stage process.
Choose a category, try a prompt, then open its approach, worked solution or follow-up when you need it.
How do you implement and use generics in Go, and what are the primary use cases where they improve code reusab
How do you implement and use generics in Go, and what are the primary use cases where they improve code reusability?
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?
What are the structural and performance differences between slices and linked lists, and when would you choose
What are the structural and performance differences between slices and linked lists, and when would you choose one over the other?
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?
How do you handle concurrency safely in your applications, and what mechanisms do you use to prevent race cond
How do you handle concurrency safely in your applications, and what mechanisms do you use to prevent race conditions?
Approach
- Say what the runtime actually does before reasoning about the code.
- Name what is shared across threads and what owns each piece of state.
- Identify the window where an invariant is briefly untrue.
- Distinguish a value from a reference to it, and say which one you handed out.
Follow-up
- What happens if two callers reach this at the same time?
- Where could this allocate more than you expect?
Explain the role of unit testing in your development workflow and how you structure tests for complex business
Explain the role of unit testing in your development workflow and how you structure tests for complex business logic.
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?
What are some common design patterns you apply to keep your codebase modular and easy to extend over time?
What are some common design patterns you apply to keep your codebase modular and easy to extend over time?
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?
Keep soft-deleted accounts from blocking re-registration
app_user holds user_id, tenant_id, email CITEXT, password_hash (NULL for SSO principals), email_verified_at, auth_version, status ('invited','active','suspended','deactivated'), created_at, updated_at, deleted_at. Two live accounts for one address inside a tenant must be impossible, but an address freed by a soft delete must be reusable, and the same tenant may delete and re-register it repeatedly. Write the uniqueness DDL for PostgreSQL 16, then the equivalent for MySQL 8 where partial indexes do not exist, and say what each permits once three deleted rows already hold that address.
Approach
- Start from what is actually unique: not (tenant_id, email), but (tenant_id, email) among live rows. PostgreSQL says that directly — CREATE UNIQUE INDEX app_user_live_email ON app_user (tenant_id, email) WHERE deleted_at IS NULL. A full constraint over the same two columns burns the address permanently the first time someone deletes an account.
- Keep case-insensitivity in the type or the index, never in the application: CITEXT as given, or UNIQUE (tenant_id, lower(email)) as an expression index where the extension is unavailable. A case-sensitive unique column is exactly how two accounts for one human appear.
- For MySQL 8 the predicate has to move inside the key: add a discriminator column that is a constant 0 while the row is live and is set to user_id on delete, with UNIQUE (tenant_id, email, deleted_marker). Live rows share the constant and still collide; deleted rows differ from each other and stop colliding.
- State the NULL variant and its dependency: leaving the marker NULL for deleted rows also works, because a unique index treats NULLs as distinct — true in MySQL, and true in PostgreSQL only under the default NULLS DISTINCT, which PostgreSQL 15 lets you reverse. Check the polarity against the three existing deleted rows: constant-on-live is what preserves the collision you want, and reversing it silently admits duplicate live accounts.
Follow-up
- A deleted account re-registers with the same address the next day. Do the old resource rows follow the new user_id, and how does the API keep the two principals apart?
- How do you honour an erasure request while resource_revision.actor_user_id still references this table?
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?
How do you accurately extract the client's real IP address from an incoming HTTP request when the application
How do you accurately extract the client's real IP address from an incoming HTTP request when the application is behind multiple layers of reverse proxies or load balancers?
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 is your strategy for implementing a robust, thread-safe rate limiter to protect an API from abuse?
What is your strategy for implementing a robust, thread-safe rate limiter to protect an API from abuse?
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?
How do you design an HTTP request counter that can scale efficiently under high concurrency?
How do you design an HTTP request counter that can scale efficiently under high concurrency?
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 are the trade-offs of using `X-Forwarded-For` headers for tracking client requests, and how do you mitiga
What are the trade-offs of using X-Forwarded-For headers for tracking client requests, and how do you mitigate security risks like header spoofing?
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?
How do you design APIs that maintain backward compatibility while supporting rapid product iterations?
How do you design APIs that maintain backward compatibility while supporting rapid product iterations?
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?
Can you share an experience where you had to debug a complex production issue under tight time constraints? Wh
Can you share an experience where you had to debug a complex production issue under tight time constraints? What was your methodology?
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 Simplesurance candidates report.
Prepare, practise & reflect
One practical outcome each day. Spend longer where you need it.
0 / 7 done01Map the Simplesurance loop
- Write out the reported sequence: HR Screening Call, Technical Screening, Take-Home Coding Challenge, Technical Interview, Product-Focused Round, Final Interview Day.
- 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 6 reported rounds, with the weakest marked.
02Work Go (Golang)
- Spend the session on Go (Golang), which Simplesurance candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Go (Golang) and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Go (Golang).
03Work HTTP request processing
- Spend the session on HTTP request processing, which Simplesurance candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in HTTP request processing and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in HTTP request processing.
04Work Coding Challenges (problem solving)
- Spend the session on Coding Challenges (problem solving), which Simplesurance candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Coding Challenges (problem solving) and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Coding Challenges (problem solving).
05Answer out loud: Technical & Coding Foundations
- Answer aloud, timed: How do you implement and use generics in Go, and what are the primary use cases where they improve code reusability?
- Answer aloud, timed: What are the structural and performance differences between slices and linked lists, and when would you choose one over the other?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Technical & Coding Foundations question(s), under time.
06Answer out loud: Systems & API Design
- Answer aloud, timed: How do you accurately extract the client's real IP address from an incoming HTTP request when the application is behind multiple layers of reverse proxies or load balancers?
- Answer aloud, timed: What is your strategy for implementing a robust, thread-safe rate limiter to protect an API from abuse?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Systems & API Design question(s), under time.
07Answer out loud: Behavioral & Process Alignment
- Answer aloud, timed: Describe a time when project requirements changed mid-cycle. How did you adapt your technical approach, and how did you communicate this to your stakeholders?
- Answer aloud, timed: How do you collaborate with Product Owners to refine technical requirements and define the scope of a feature?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Behavioral & Process Alignment 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 time when project requirements changed mid-cycle. How did you adapt your technical approach, and ho
Describe a time when project requirements changed mid-cycle. How did you adapt your technical approach, and how did you communicate this to your stakeholders?
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 collaborate with Product Owners to refine technical requirements and define the scope of a feature?
How do you collaborate with Product Owners to refine technical requirements and define the scope of a feature?
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 deliver constructive feedback during code reviews, and how do you handle differing technical opinio
How do you deliver constructive feedback during code reviews, and how do you handle differing technical opinions within your team?
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 is your approach to technical debt, and how do you balance refactoring with delivering new product featur
What is your approach to technical debt, and how do you balance refactoring with delivering new product features?
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 a time when project requirements changed mid-cycle. How did you adapt your technical approach, and how did you communicate this to your stakeholders?
- 02
How do you collaborate with Product Owners to refine technical requirements and define the scope of a feature?
- 03
How do you deliver constructive feedback during code reviews, and how do you handle differing technical opinions within your team?
- 04
What is your approach to technical debt, and how do you balance refactoring with delivering new product features?
How difficult is the interview process at Simplesurance?
The process is rated as average to challenging. While the individual coding tasks (like the request counter) are conceptually straightforward, the rigor comes from the live extension round, where you must refactor and build upon your code under time constraints while maintaining high standards of clean architecture.
Simplesurance Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What is the typical timeline from the first screen to an offer?
The entire process generally takes between 3 to 5 weeks, depending on candidate availability and scheduling. Simplesurance aims to keep candidates informed, but because the process involves multiple practical coding reviews and cross-functional rounds, it can take time to coordinate all stakeholders.
Simplesurance Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Do I need to have professional experience in Go to apply?
While Go is the primary language used by the backend teams and is highly valued, strong software engineers with deep experience in other modern backend languages (like Java, C#, or Rust) who demonstrate solid architectural principles, clean coding habits, and a willingness to learn Go quickly are highly encouraged to apply.
Simplesurance Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What makes a candidate stand out during the final interview day?
Successful candidates stand out by demonstrating excellent communication during the live coding extension. Instead of coding in silence, they talk through their thought process, explain the trade-offs of their design choices, write clean unit tests for their new code, and handle feedback constructively.
Simplesurance Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What is the remote work policy at Simplesurance?
Simplesurance generally operates on a hybrid model, particularly for roles based out of their main hubs like Berlin or Lisbon. While they offer flexibility, they highly value in-person collaboration, team-building, and community engagement, making regular office presence an important part of their engineering culture.
Simplesurance Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What topics does Simplesurance test in interviews?
Simplesurance interviews most often cover Go (Golang), Reference checks / background evaluation, API Fundamentals, HTTP request processing, and Sales & business development question handling. The exact emphasis depends on the specific role you apply for.
Simplesurance 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.
- 01Simplesurance 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.
Venmo Software Engineer Interview Guide
What Venmo asks Software Engineer candidates, from reported rounds and questions.
Thunes Software Engineer Interview Guide
What Thunes asks Software Engineer candidates, from reported rounds and questions.
Systems Development and Analysis Software Engineer Interview Guide
What Systems Development and Analysis asks Software Engineer candidates, from reported rounds and questions.
Synack Software Engineer Interview Guide
What Synack asks Software Engineer candidates, from reported rounds and questions.