Canonical Software Engineer interview experience

I ended up writing a long essay—one submission was around ten pages—and I spent a lot of time trying to connect what I wrote about with who I am and how that translates into competence now. That part didn’t feel especially meaningful to me, especially when the questions pulled so hard on high school decisions and scores.

After the essay stage, the process moved into structured tests and then more technical screening. I saw forms of automated LeetCode-style questions in a follow-up step, plus other evaluation layers depending on the stage, and I remember it taking weeks from start to finish.