Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer interview experience

The first stage was a 90-minute set of three questions. One was about strings, another involved intervals, and the third was the one that pushed me for time—I wasn’t able to finish with enough thoroughness, so I ended up using a naive approach that wasn’t as efficient as it could have been.

After that, my live interview felt calmer and more supportive. It opened like a friendly conversation, then moved into simple coding with clear expectations. The interviewer guided the discussion in a way that kept the focus on understanding the problem and reasoning through it, not on trying to catch me