At Starr Companies, a leading global insurance and investment organization, a Software Engineer plays a crucial role in driving digital transformation across commercial insurance underwriting, claims processing, and risk assessment systems. Engineers here do not just write code; they build and optimize high-availability platforms that manage billions of dollars in global risk. The technical solutions you develop directly impact underwriting precision, operational efficiency, and the overall experience of global clients and brokers. As a Software Engineer, you will work on modernizing legacy insurance systems, designing robust APIs, and implementing cloud-native microservices. The engineering team is responsible for integrating core insurance platforms, such as Guidewire, with modern web applications and data pipelines. This requires a unique balance of deep technical expertise, architectural foresight, and an understanding of complex financial and regulatory workflows. The engineering culture at Starr Companies emphasizes collaboration, continuous learning, and high standards of code quality. Whether you are optimizing database queries, implementing secure microservices in Java, or designing intuitive user interfaces, your work will directly contribute to the stability and scalability of a global financial powerhouse. Preparing for this role requires a strong grasp of software engineering fundamentals, object-oriented design, and a proactive problem-solving mindset.
Application Review
reportedInitial review of the online application submitted by the candidate.
What to demonstrate
- Initial review of the online application submitted by the candidate
- Depth in Behavioral Interviewing
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.
Asynchronous Virtual Assessment
reportedCandidates complete behavioral video recordings and a timed coding challenge.
What to demonstrate
- Candidates complete behavioral video recordings and a timed coding challenge
- Depth in Behavioral Interviewing
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: How do you balance and prioritize multiple urgent tasks or competing project deadlines?
- Answer aloud and timed: Tell me about a time you had to work with a difficult stakeholder or team member. How did you resolve the conflict?
Live Virtual Interviews
reportedCandidates engage in live interviews with technical panels, hiring managers, and senior engineering leaders.
What to demonstrate
- Candidates engage in live interviews with technical panels, hiring managers, and senior engineering leaders
- Depth in Behavioral Interviewing
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: Why do you want to work in the insurance technology sector, and how does this role align with your long-term career goals?
- Answer aloud and timed: Explain the four main pillars of Object-Oriented Programming and provide a practical example of how you have used each in a past project.
Final Rounds
reportedFocus on deep technical discussions, live coding or system design, and behavioral evaluations.
What to demonstrate
- Focus on deep technical discussions, live coding or system design, and behavioral evaluations
- Depth in Behavioral Interviewing
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: What is the difference between an interface and an abstract class, and when would you use one over the other?
- Answer aloud and timed: Walk me through a code sample or a past project where you had to make specific design choices to ensure scalability and maintainability.
2 candidate reports. Individual accounts describe a particular role and hiring cycle.
Software Engineer interview at Starr Companies: interview experience
After I applied, about a month passed before I heard anything. I was then sent a HireVue link for video responses and a coding challenge. After another wait, a technical recruiter scheduled a short 30-minute call to explain the role and next steps. About a week later, I was invited to schedule time with the hiring manager. That conversation mixed behavioral and technical topics, including Spring…
Read full experienceStarr Companies Software Engineer interview experience
Within a few business days of applying, I was invited to interview through an AI-style HireVue recording. I logged in, read one prompt at a time, had a short preparation window, and recorded a camera response. The questions were mostly STAR-style behavioral questions, with two attempts per prompt. Using the second attempt submitted it automatically. Near the end, a coding challenge appeared in th…
Read full experiencePracHub editorial advice for the preparation topics above.
Master the STAR Method
Prepare 3 to 5 versatile professional stories that highlight your technical leadership, problem-solving abilities, and adaptability. Ensure every story has a clear, quantifiable result.
Practice Asynchronous Communication
Since the initial screen is recorded, practice speaking clearly and maintaining good eye contact with your camera. Keep your answers concise and structured within the allotted time.
Review Core OOP Principles
Do not just memorize definitions. Be ready to explain how you have utilized inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation to solve specific design challenges in your past projects.
Brush Up on SQL
SQL queries are frequently used in the technical evaluations. Practice writing joins, aggregations, and subqueries, and understand how indexing affects query performance.
Ask Thoughtful Questions
At the end of your live interviews, ask insightful questions about the team's engineering culture, their current technical challenges, or the future of digital transformation at the company.
Choose a category, try a prompt, then open its approach, worked solution or follow-up when you need it.
Write an algorithm to perform string compression (e.g., converting "aabcccccaaa" to "a2b1c5a3") and discuss it
Write an algorithm to perform string compression (e.g., converting "aabcccccaaa" to "a2b1c5a3") and discuss its time and space complexity.
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?
Given an array of integers, write a function to parse and filter the data based on specific business rules.
Given an array of integers, write a function to parse and filter the data based on specific business rules.
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 would you approach designing the backend logic and board state representation for a terminal-based game li
How would you approach designing the backend logic and board state representation for a terminal-based game like Connect 4 or 2048?
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?
Solve a classic graph traversal problem (such as finding the shortest path in a network) and explain your choi
Solve a classic graph traversal problem (such as finding the shortest path in a network) and explain your choice of algorithm.
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?
Write a SQL query to retrieve and aggregate data from multiple relational tables, and explain how you would op
Write a SQL query to retrieve and aggregate data from multiple relational tables, and explain how you would optimize its 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?
Hold a per-tenant active cap against concurrent creates
A tenant on the standard plan may hold at most 50 resources with status='active'. The create handler runs SELECT count(*) FROM resource WHERE tenant_id = $1 AND status = 'active', compares to 50, then inserts. Two creates arrive 3 ms apart on different instances and the tenant lands at 51. Name the anomaly, say whether PostgreSQL 16 READ COMMITTED or REPEATABLE READ prevents it and why, then give an implementation that holds the cap at READ COMMITTED with the exact statements. Finally, say what changes when the cap is 'at most one running export per tenant' on job_run.
Approach
- Name it: write skew. The two transactions read an overlapping set and write disjoint rows, so there is no row-level conflict for the engine to detect and each commit is individually legal.
- Rule out the levels precisely. READ COMMITTED takes a fresh snapshot per statement and takes no lock on the counted rows, so both see 49. PostgreSQL's REPEATABLE READ is snapshot isolation: it removes non-repeatable reads and phantoms within the snapshot but still admits write skew, because the anomaly is not a re-read of a changed row, it is a read of a set that a concurrent transaction invalidates. Only SERIALIZABLE closes it, by tracking the read dependency and aborting one transaction with SQLSTATE 40001 — a guarantee that exists only if the application re-runs the whole transaction from the read.
- Convert the set predicate into a single-row conflict: keep tenant.active_resource_count and run UPDATE tenant SET active_resource_count = active_resource_count + 1 WHERE tenant_id = $1 AND active_resource_count < 50 in the same transaction as the INSERT. Zero affected rows is the cap, returned as 409. The row lock serialises the decision at any isolation level, and contention is bounded to one tenant's row — which is also the fair-scheduling unit, unlike a global counter that would convoy every tenant behind one row.
- State the cost you just took on: a counter is a second source of truth that can drift, so every path that changes status must adjust it inside the same transaction, and a periodic reconciliation has to exist, with resource_revision as the authority for what the count should have been.
Follow-up
- A resource moves from archived back to active. Which statements change, and what breaks if the counter update and the status change land in different transactions?
- The cap becomes plan-dependent and a plan can change mid-month. Where does the number 50 live, and who reads it?
Explain the four main pillars of Object-Oriented Programming and provide a practical example of how you have u
Explain the four main pillars of Object-Oriented Programming and provide a practical example of how you have used each in a past project.
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 is the difference between an interface and an abstract class, and when would you use one over the other?
What is the difference between an interface and an abstract class, and when would you use one over the other?
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 a code sample or a past project where you had to make specific design choices to ensure scalab
Walk me through a code sample or a past project where you had to make specific design choices to ensure scalability and maintainability.
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 concept of dependency injection and how it helps in writing testable code.
Explain the concept of dependency injection and how it helps in writing testable code.
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?
Design a high-level microservices architecture for a core insurance function, such as processing a policy rene
Design a high-level microservices architecture for a core insurance function, such as processing a policy renewal.
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 key architectural differences between a monolithic system and a microservices-based system, and w
What are the key architectural differences between a monolithic system and a microservices-based system, and what are the trade-offs of migrating between them?
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?
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 Starr Companies candidates report.
Prepare, practise & reflect
One practical outcome each day. Spend longer where you need it.
0 / 7 done01Map the Starr Companies loop
- Write out the reported sequence: Application Review, Asynchronous Virtual Assessment, Live Virtual Interviews, Final Rounds.
- 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 4 reported rounds, with the weakest marked.
02Work Behavioral Interviewing
- Spend the session on Behavioral Interviewing, which Starr Companies 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.
03Work Problem Solving (Core Evaluation Criterion)
- Spend the session on Problem Solving (Core Evaluation Criterion), which Starr Companies candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Problem Solving (Core Evaluation Criterion) and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Problem Solving (Core Evaluation Criterion).
04Work Live Coding / Real-time Problem Solving
- Spend the session on Live Coding / Real-time Problem Solving, which Starr Companies candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Live Coding / Real-time Problem Solving and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Live Coding / Real-time Problem Solving.
05Answer out loud: Behavioral & Situational Questions
- Answer aloud, timed: Tell me about yourself and why you are interested in joining the engineering team at Starr Companies.
- Answer aloud, timed: Describe a time when a project or task went wrong. How did you handle the situation, and what did you learn from it?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Behavioral & Situational Questions question(s), under time.
06Answer out loud: Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) & Core Concepts
- Answer aloud, timed: Explain the four main pillars of Object-Oriented Programming and provide a practical example of how you have used each in a past project.
- Answer aloud, timed: What is the difference between an interface and an abstract class, and when would you use one over the other?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) & Core Concepts question(s), under time.
07Answer out loud: Coding, Algorithms & Problem Solving
- Answer aloud, timed: Write an algorithm to perform string compression (e.g., converting "aabcccccaaa" to "a2b1c5a3") and discuss its time and space complexity.
- Answer aloud, timed: Given an array of integers, write a function to parse and filter the data based on specific business rules.
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Coding, Algorithms & Problem Solving 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.
Tell me about yourself and why you are interested in joining the engineering team at Starr Companies.
Tell me about yourself and why you are interested in joining the engineering team at Starr Companies.
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 time when a project or task went wrong. How did you handle the situation, and what did you learn fr
Describe a time when a project or task went wrong. How did you handle the situation, and what did you learn from 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?
How do you balance and prioritize multiple urgent tasks or competing project deadlines?
How do you balance and prioritize multiple urgent tasks or competing project deadlines?
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 difficult stakeholder or team member. How did you resolve the conf
Tell me about a time you had to work with a difficult stakeholder or team member. How did you resolve the conflict?
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?
Why do you want to work in the insurance technology sector, and how does this role align with your long-term c
Why do you want to work in the insurance technology sector, and how does this role align with your long-term career goals?
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?
Which transaction types in a core insurance suite like Guidewire cannot be processed out-of-sequence, and how
Which transaction types in a core insurance suite like Guidewire cannot be processed out-of-sequence, and how do you handle data consistency in such scenarios?
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
Tell me about yourself and why you are interested in joining the engineering team at Starr Companies.
- 02
Describe a time when a project or task went wrong. How did you handle the situation, and what did you learn from it?
- 03
How do you balance and prioritize multiple urgent tasks or competing project deadlines?
- 04
Tell me about a time you had to work with a difficult stakeholder or team member. How did you resolve the conflict?
How difficult is the Software Engineer interview process at Starr Companies?
The process is generally rated as average in difficulty, but it is highly thorough. The automated HireVue stage can catch candidates off guard if they are not used to video recordings or timed coding, but the subsequent human-led rounds are highly collaborative and conversational.
Starr Companies Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What is the most common reason candidates struggle during the technical rounds?
Candidates often struggle when they jump straight into coding without clarifying requirements first, or when they fail to explain their thought process. Interviewers value strong communication, structured problem-solving, and clean code organization over simply memorizing algorithmic solutions.
Starr Companies Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Does Starr Companies require prior experience with insurance platforms like Guidewire?
No, prior Guidewire experience is not a strict requirement for all software engineering roles. However, possessing a basic understanding of insurance workflows and how enterprise platforms integrate can give you a strong competitive edge during the team-specific rounds.
Starr Companies Software Engineer candidate reports ↗How long does the entire hiring process typically take from application to offer?
The timeline generally ranges from three to six weeks. The initial screening and automated assessment results are processed relatively quickly, while scheduling the panel interviews and finalizing the offer details can take a few weeks depending on team availability.
Starr Companies Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What topics does Starr Companies test in interviews?
Starr Companies interviews most often cover SQL, Behavioral Interviewing, PySpark, Insurance licensing (pre-licensing requirements), and Information Security (General). The exact emphasis depends on the specific role you apply for.
Starr 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.
- 01Starr 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
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