A Software Engineer at Tubi plays a critical role in shaping the technology that powers a leading, high-scale, ad-supported streaming service. This position is responsible for building and maintaining services that deliver seamless entertainment to millions of active users. Because Tubi handles massive traffic and high concurrency, engineers here work on challenging, real-world problems that directly impact the reliability, speed, and overall user experience of the platform. The impact of this role spans multiple critical technical domains. Depending on your specialization, you will contribute to high-performance backend microservices, robust video transcoding pipelines, or highly responsive frontend interfaces. The work involves orchestrating distributed systems, optimizing video delivery networks, and scaling cloud infrastructure. This requires a deep appreciation for system efficiency and clean architecture. What makes engineering at Tubi distinct is the unique blend of a fast-growing, data-driven culture and a highly complex technical stack. Working with tools like,,, and, you will collaborate across distributed teams to solve scalability challenges that few other streaming platforms face. For candidates who thrive on solving high-throughput system challenges and building resilient software, this role offers an exceptionally rewarding and high-impact career path. Elixir Scala React AWS
Recruiter Screen
reportedInitial screening call with a recruiter to assess your fit for the role.
What to demonstrate
- Initial screening call with a recruiter to assess your fit for the role
- Depth in System Design
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 Phone Screen
reportedLive coding or domain-specific questions to evaluate hands-on coding skills.
What to demonstrate
- Live coding or domain-specific questions to evaluate hands-on coding skills
- Depth in System Design
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.
Onsite Loop
reportedVirtual or in-person interviews including deep-dive coding sessions and system design assessments.
What to demonstrate
- Virtual or in-person interviews including deep-dive coding sessions and system design assessments
- Depth in System Design
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: Write a program that manages concurrent state updates or simulates a high-throughput event queue.
- Answer aloud and timed: Design a highly scalable video transcoding and streaming pipeline that can handle sudden spikes in user traffic.
Leadership Conversations
reportedDiscussions with engineering leadership, including the CTO or VP of Engineering.
What to demonstrate
- Discussions with engineering leadership
- Including the CTO or VP of Engineering
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: Architect a backend system that supports real-time watch-history tracking for millions of concurrent users.
- Answer aloud and timed: Explain how you would design a distributed caching layer using AWS infrastructure to reduce database load.
1 candidate reports. Individual accounts describe a particular role and hiring cycle.
Tubi Associate MLE Interview Experience — Waitlisted After a Surprise AI-Assisted Coding Round
View report detailsPracHub editorial advice for the preparation topics above.
Going into the loop without having done this.
To maximize your chances of success during the Tubi interview loop, keep these practical, insider tips in mind:
Going into the loop without having done this.
Clarify the problem constraints early: Before you write a single line of code, ask clarifying questions about input sizes, expected throughput, and edge cases. This shows that you think like a pragmatic systems engineer.
Going into the loop without having done this.
Test your code thoroughly: When coding in your IDE or a shared environment, do not just assume your code works. Walk through your logic with sample inputs and explicitly call out potential edge cases.
Going into the loop without having done this.
Be ready for AWS-specific discussions: Tubi relies heavily on AWS. When designing systems, leverage standard AWS components (like S3, DynamoDB, EC2, or ECS) and be prepared to explain why you chose them.
Choose a category, try a prompt, then open its approach, worked solution or follow-up when you need it.
Implement a solution to find the Top K Elements in a stream or dataset, and be prepared to discuss the exact t
Implement a solution to find the Top K Elements in a stream or dataset, and be prepared to discuss the exact time and space complexity of your approach.
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 complete, runnable program from scratch to parse a large log file, extract specific metrics, and outpu
Write a complete, runnable program from scratch to parse a large log file, extract specific metrics, and output the structured results.
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?
Implement a recursive algorithm to solve a complex nested data structure manipulation problem.
Implement a recursive algorithm to solve a complex nested data structure manipulation problem.
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?
Create a responsive layout or a small functional application component using React, Redux, and modern CSS from
Create a responsive layout or a small functional application component using React, Redux, and modern CSS from scratch.
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?
Describe the core concepts of the Erlang/OTP actor model or how you would leverage Elixir to build concurrent
Describe the core concepts of the Erlang/OTP actor model or how you would leverage Elixir to build concurrent systems.
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?
Find version gaps and relay lag with window functions
outbox_event holds event_id, aggregate_type, aggregate_id, aggregate_version, event_type, payload, status ('pending','published','dead'), attempts, created_at, published_at. A projection is missing rows and you must decide whether the relay skipped events or the consumer dropped them. Write three queries over the last seven days: one listing every aggregate_id whose published aggregate_version sequence has a hole, one giving per-day counts with a running total, and one returning the newest published event per aggregate. For each, say where the window function is evaluated relative to WHERE and LIMIT. PostgreSQL 16.
Approach
- Gaps: compute lead(aggregate_version) OVER (PARTITION BY aggregate_id ORDER BY aggregate_version) in a subquery, then filter next_version <> aggregate_version + 1 in the outer query. Window functions are evaluated after WHERE, GROUP BY and HAVING and before the outer ORDER BY and LIMIT, so the predicate cannot sit in the same WHERE clause and PostgreSQL 16 has no QUALIFY.
- Say what the seven-day filter does to the answer: it truncates every partition, so the first row per aggregate has no predecessor inside the window and a hole spanning the boundary is invisible. Widen the window, or join to resource.version as the authority for the true maximum.
- Running total: SELECT date_trunc('day', created_at) AS d, count() AS n, sum(count()) OVER (ORDER BY date_trunc('day', created_at) ROWS UNBOUNDED PRECEDING). An aggregate inside a window call is legal because grouping runs before windowing. The grouping key is unique per row here so ROWS and RANGE agree, but write the frame anyway — over ungrouped rows with tied timestamps the default RANGE frame pulls in every peer row and the total jumps.
- Newest per aggregate: DISTINCT ON (aggregate_id) ... ORDER BY aggregate_id, aggregate_version DESC is the cheap PostgreSQL-only form when an index matches that order; row_number() OVER (PARTITION BY aggregate_id ORDER BY aggregate_version DESC) = 1 is the portable form and needs a subquery for the same evaluation-order reason as the gap query.
Follow-up
- Relay failover redelivers events. Does a duplicate break the gap query, and how would you detect one from this table alone?
- Turn the gap check into a continuous monitor rather than a query someone runs after an incident. What does it watch?
Denormalise tenant onto revisions and backfill it live
resource_revision (revision_id, resource_id, version, actor_user_id, change_kind, patch, request_id, created_at) has 400M rows and no tenant column; tenant_id lives only on resource. Two reads need it: a tenant-scoped audit feed ordered by created_at DESC, and an offboarding purge. Both join back to resource today. Justify adding tenant_id to resource_revision against those two reads, name the anomaly the copy introduces and the constraint that prevents it, then give the ordered migration for a live table taking 1.2k writes/second — the lock each step takes, how the backfill is batched, and where each step stops being reversible. PostgreSQL 16.
Approach
- Justify from the access path rather than from taste. Without the column, the audit feed either scans resource_revision by created_at and discards other tenants' rows, or resolves the tenant's resource_ids first and probes with them — both proportional to the tenant's whole history rather than to one page. With (tenant_id, created_at DESC, revision_id DESC) it is a seek that stops at 50 rows, and the purge becomes a ranged delete instead of a join.
- Name the cost exactly: a second copy of a fact can disagree with the first. Make the disagreement unwritable rather than documented — add UNIQUE (resource_id, tenant_id) on resource so it can serve as a foreign-key target, then FOREIGN KEY (resource_id, tenant_id) REFERENCES resource (resource_id, tenant_id) on the revision table. A revision can then only ever carry its parent's tenant.
- Step one, expand: ALTER TABLE resource_revision ADD COLUMN tenant_id BIGINT NULL, with no default, so it is a catalogue change and no rewrite. It still needs ACCESS EXCLUSIVE for an instant, and that instant queues behind the longest open transaction on the table while every later query queues behind it — set lock_timeout to 2s and retry rather than wait.
- Step two, dual-write: deploy the writer that populates tenant_id on every new revision while reads still use the join. Reversible by redeploying the previous build, because nothing reads the column yet.
Follow-up
- The backfill is half finished and a rollback is required. What state is the table in, and what does the previous build do with a half-populated column?
- How do you verify the backfill actually finished, given rows are still being inserted while it runs?
Write a program that manages concurrent state updates or simulates a high-throughput event queue.
Write a program that manages concurrent state updates or simulates a high-throughput event queue.
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?
Design a highly scalable video transcoding and streaming pipeline that can handle sudden spikes in user traffi
Design a highly scalable video transcoding and streaming pipeline that can handle sudden spikes in user traffic.
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?
Architect a backend system that supports real-time watch-history tracking for millions of concurrent users.
Architect a backend system that supports real-time watch-history tracking for millions of concurrent users.
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 how you would design a distributed caching layer using AWS infrastructure to reduce database load.
Explain how you would design a distributed caching layer using AWS infrastructure to reduce database load.
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?
Walk through the design of an ad-insertion engine that dynamically serves ads into video streams with minimal
Walk through the design of an ad-insertion engine that dynamically serves ads into video streams with minimal latency.
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 would you structure a microservice architecture to isolate failures and ensure high availability across gl
How would you structure a microservice architecture to isolate failures and ensure high availability across globally distributed regions?
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 how you would configure and scale a Kubernetes cluster to handle auto-scaling backend microservices.
Explain how you would configure and scale a Kubernetes cluster to handle auto-scaling backend microservices.
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 optimize database queries and manage schema migrations in a high-traffic, live production environme
How do you optimize database queries and manage schema migrations in a high-traffic, live production environment?
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 virtual nodes in a distributed hashing ring, and how do they prevent hot spot
What are the trade-offs of using virtual nodes in a distributed hashing ring, and how do they prevent hot spots?
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?
Walk me through a complex technical system you built from scratch, focusing on the architectural trade-offs yo
Walk me through a complex technical system you built from scratch, focusing on the architectural trade-offs you made.
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?
Walk through a scenario where a service running on an AWS EC2 instance experiences sudden network drops, and e
Walk through a scenario where a service running on an AWS EC2 instance experiences sudden network drops, and explain how you would debug it.
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 Tubi candidates report.
Prepare, practise & reflect
One practical outcome each day. Spend longer where you need it.
0 / 7 done01Map the Tubi loop
- Write out the reported sequence: Recruiter Screen, Technical Phone Screen, Onsite Loop, Leadership Conversations.
- 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 System Design
- Spend the session on System Design, which Tubi candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in System Design and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in System Design.
03Work Coding Interviews
- Spend the session on Coding Interviews, which Tubi candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Coding Interviews and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Coding Interviews.
04Work Programming in JavaScript
- Spend the session on Programming in JavaScript, which Tubi candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Programming in JavaScript and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Programming in JavaScript.
05Answer out loud: Coding & Practical Problem Solving
- Answer aloud, timed: Implement a solution to find the Top K Elements in a stream or dataset, and be prepared to discuss the exact time and space complexity of your approach.
- Answer aloud, timed: Write a complete, runnable program from scratch to parse a large log file, extract specific metrics, and output the structured results.
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Coding & Practical Problem Solving question(s), under time.
06Answer out loud: System Design & Architecture
- Answer aloud, timed: Design a highly scalable video transcoding and streaming pipeline that can handle sudden spikes in user traffic.
- Answer aloud, timed: Architect a backend system that supports real-time watch-history tracking for millions of concurrent users.
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported System Design & Architecture question(s), under time.
07Answer out loud: Infrastructure & Domain-Specific
- Answer aloud, timed: Explain how you would configure and scale a Kubernetes cluster to handle auto-scaling backend microservices.
- Answer aloud, timed: Describe the core concepts of the Erlang/OTP actor model or how you would leverage Elixir to build concurrent systems.
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Infrastructure & Domain-Specific 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 you disagreed with a technical decision made by a team lead or manager. How did you resol
Describe a time when you disagreed with a technical decision made by a team lead or manager. How did you resolve 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 handle production outages or high-severity bugs under tight timelines?
How do you handle production outages or high-severity bugs under tight timelines?
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?
Talk about a project where you had to quickly learn and adopt a new, unfamiliar technology to meet a business
Talk about a project where you had to quickly learn and adopt a new, unfamiliar technology to meet a business goal.
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 writing high-quality, clean code with the need to deliver features quickly in a fast-paced
How do you balance writing high-quality, clean code with the need to deliver features quickly in a fast-paced environment?
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 you disagreed with a technical decision made by a team lead or manager. How did you resolve it?
- 02
How do you handle production outages or high-severity bugs under tight timelines?
- 03
Talk about a project where you had to quickly learn and adopt a new, unfamiliar technology to meet a business goal.
- 04
How do you balance writing high-quality, clean code with the need to deliver features quickly in a fast-paced environment?
How technical is the interview process at Tubi?
The process is highly technical and practical. Expect to write actual, runnable code during your technical screens rather than just discussing theoretical concepts or solving abstract puzzles.
Tubi Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Does Tubi require experience in Elixir or Scala for backend roles?
While Tubi uses Elixir and Scala extensively, they value strong engineering fundamentals over specific language experience. If you are strong in other concurrent or object-oriented languages, you will have the opportunity to learn their stack on the job.
Tubi Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What is the remote work and location policy?
Tubi has offices in cities like San Francisco, Dallas, and Toronto. Depending on the specific team and role, they offer hybrid or remote work options, though alignment with core team time zones is highly valued.
Tubi Software Engineer candidate reports ↗How fast does Tubi make hiring decisions?
The timeline can vary, but most candidates receive feedback within a week of completing each major stage. The entire process from application to offer typically takes three to four weeks.
Tubi Software Engineer candidate reports ↗How hard is the Tubi interview?
Candidates most commonly rate Tubi interviews as medium, based on 186 reported interviews. About 18% of candidates who interview go on to receive an offer.
Tubi Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What topics does Tubi test in interviews?
Tubi interviews most often cover SQL, Cross-functional Collaboration, Problem Solving, Python, and Kubernetes. The exact emphasis depends on the specific role you apply for.
Tubi Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Where is Tubi headquartered?
Tubi is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Tubi Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Sources & methodology 3 sources ↗
Official role evidence, timestamped platform data and clearly labeled preparation advice.
- 01Tubi Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
Company-reported rounds, questions and FAQ.
candidate · Accessed 2026-09-22 - 02PracHub Software Engineer practice ↗
PracHub practice material, not company-reported.
platform · Accessed 2026-09-22 - 03PracHub preparation framework ↗
PracHub preparation guidance.
platform · Accessed 2026-09-22
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