Cruise Software Engineer interview experience

The interview process began with a one-hour coding challenge, and then I had a deep dive with the hiring manager that lasted another hour. The coding was positioned as LeetCode-hard level, and even though the discussion helped, the gap was real: I didn’t end up connecting well with the hiring manager, and the “chemistry” mismatch showed in how the conversation went.

In the rounds overall, the questions were strongly job-specific. I ran into a smaller set of coding and system design-style topics rather than random generalities, and I remember the engineers being professional and competent.