United Airlines Software Engineer interview experience

The difficulty felt difficult because it wasn’t just “answer the question” style. The prompts required deeper explanations—answers weren’t enough if they weren’t supported by reasoning.

The questions themselves stayed grounded in the back-end topic area, but what made it challenging was the expectation to articulate the underlying thinking. It felt like they were checking how I reasoned about design and implementation rather than whether I could recall a standard response.

I didn’t end up getting an offer, but I walked away feeling like I’d been tested on depth rather than trivia.