Implement and Improve React Components
Company: Squarepoint Capital
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Other / Miscellaneous
Difficulty: hard
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Implement two React tasks and discuss improvements:
1) Build a reusable rating component in React.
- Display a configurable number of icons (default
5) with optional half-step selection.
- Support mouse, touch, and keyboard interactions (Arrow keys, Enter/Space) and proper focus management.
- Ensure accessibility with appropriate ARIA roles/labels and screen-reader announcements.
- Expose controlled and uncontrolled modes (value, defaultValue, onChange) and support readOnly/disabled.
- Allow custom icon rendering and RTL support. Include basic unit tests.
2) Build a Todo application in React.
- Add, edit, delete, and toggle completion of tasks.
- Filter by All/Active/Completed and provide "clear completed".
- Persist state to localStorage and handle empty/error states.
- Structure components and manage state with React hooks; explain trade-offs if using a state library. Include basic tests.
Follow-ups: How would you improve the Todo component? Discuss performance (memoization, list virtualization, debounced updates), accessibility (labels, keyboard shortcuts, live announcements), UX features (inline editing, due dates, drag-and-drop), scalability (API sync with optimistic updates), and code quality (TypeScript/PropTypes, error boundaries, testing strategy).
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a developer's proficiency in React component design and state management, including hooks-based architecture, controlled vs uncontrolled APIs, accessibility (ARIA, keyboard and screen-reader behavior), persistence to localStorage, and unit testing.