1. What is a Software Engineer at and Huntington?

As a Software Engineer at and Huntington, you are at the forefront of building the digital foundation that powers a premier regional banking experience. This role—often aligned internally as a Programmer/Analyst 2—is critical to ensuring that millions of customers and internal stakeholders have access to secure, reliable, and highly performant financial systems. You are not just writing code; you are engineering trust.

The impact of this position resonates across multiple product lines, from consumer-facing mobile applications to complex backend transaction processing systems. You will be tasked with solving high-stakes technical challenges where accuracy, security, and scalability are non-negotiable. Because the financial sector operates under strict regulatory and operational demands, your work directly influences the bank's ability to innovate while maintaining rock-solid stability.

Stepping into this role means joining a collaborative, cross-functional environment. You will work closely with product managers, senior architects, and operations teams to translate business requirements into technical realities. Expect a culture that values meticulous problem-solving, architectural foresight, and a deep understanding of how your code interacts with broader cloud and legacy infrastructures.

2. Common Interview Questions

The questions below represent the types of inquiries you will face during your and Huntington interviews. They are designed to illustrate patterns in the evaluation process. Do not memorize answers; instead, use these to practice structuring your thoughts and connecting your past experiences to core engineering principles.

Resume and Architectural Deep Dives

These questions test your actual involvement in past projects and your understanding of system design.

• Walk me through the most complex project on your resume. What was your specific contribution?
• Why did you choose to implement that specific framework instead of an alternative?
• Explain how you handled data persistence and storage in your previous application.
• If you had to scale the project you just described to handle 10x the traffic, what architectural changes would you make?
• Describe a time you had to migrate or integrate a legacy system with modern technology.

Core Technical and Coding Concepts

These questions evaluate your fundamental computer science knowledge and your ability to write efficient code.

• Write a function to solve [specific algorithmic challenge] using Coderpad.
• Explain how garbage collection works in your primary programming language.
• Can you break down this concept right down to the bits and bytes? How is memory allocated here?
• What is the time and space complexity of the code you just wrote, and how can it be optimized?
• Explain the difference between overriding and overloading, and provide a use case for each.

Cloud and Infrastructure

These questions assess your readiness to work within modern, scalable environments.

• Do you have any certifications in AWS or other major cloud providers?
• How does your experience with [Cloud Tool A] compare to [Enterprise Cloud Tool B]?
• Describe your experience working with CI/CD pipelines.
• How do you ensure secure data transmission in a cloud-hosted application?
• Explain the concept of infrastructure as code and why a team might use it.

Behavioral and Culture Fit

These questions gauge your communication style, professionalism, and alignment with the bank's values.

• Tell me about a time you disagreed with a senior engineer or manager on a technical approach. How did you resolve it?
• Why are you interested in working in the financial sector, specifically at and Huntington?
• Describe a situation where you had to explain a complex technical concept to a non-technical stakeholder.
• How do you handle situations where project requirements are highly ambiguous?
• Tell me about a time you received critical feedback on a code review. How did you respond?

3. Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Thorough preparation is your best asset when interviewing at and Huntington. The evaluation process is designed to test not only your coding proficiency but also your ability to articulate the "why" behind your technical decisions. Interviewers want to see how you think under pressure and how well you align with the bank's engineering standards.

Focus your preparation on these key evaluation criteria:

Technical Depth & Execution Interviewers will assess your command of core programming concepts, data structures, and system constraints. You must be prepared to discuss technical implementations down to the "bits and bytes," demonstrating a rigorous understanding of how your code executes in a production environment.

Architectural Reasoning & Resume Defense Your past projects are heavily scrutinized. You must be able to adequately explain how previous systems were built, why you chose specific frameworks or cloud services over others, and what trade-offs you navigated. Interviewers expect you to connect key programming concepts directly to the items listed on your resume.

Problem-Solving & Adaptability You will be evaluated on how you approach ambiguous problems and live coding scenarios. Whether stepping through a Coderpad challenge or responding to unexpected questions about specific technologies like AWS, your ability to remain composed, reason logically, and adapt to the interviewer's focus is critical.

Communication & Culture Fit and Huntington places a strong emphasis on conversational skills and professional alignment. Interviewers gauge your enthusiasm for the company, your ability to collaborate with non-technical stakeholders, and your capacity to engage in a two-way dialogue about team culture and expectations.

4. Interview Process Overview

The interview process for a Software Engineer at and Huntington is thorough and can vary slightly depending on the specific team and hiring manager. Typically, your journey begins with a 30-minute phone screen conducted by a third-party recruiter or an internal HR representative. This initial conversation focuses on your high-level background, career motivations, and basic behavioral alignment.

Following the screen, you will advance to the core interview stages, which often consist of a combination of technical and behavioral rounds. You might face a consolidated 75-minute panel interview over Microsoft Teams, or a series of back-to-back 30-minute sessions with different engineering managers. During these rounds, expect a deep dive into your resume, conversational behavioral questions, and live technical assessments.

The technical portions can range from high-level architectural discussions to highly granular, low-level programming questions. Throughout the process, interviewers will also dedicate time to explaining the culture at and Huntington, giving you a chance to ask insightful questions and determine if the team is the right fit for your career goals.

This visual timeline outlines the typical progression from your initial recruiter screen through the final technical and behavioral panels. Use this to pace your preparation, ensuring you are ready for both conversational resume deep-dives and unexpected live-coding assessments by the time you reach the hiring manager rounds. Understanding this flow helps you manage your energy and set appropriate expectations for communication timelines.

5. Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed in your interviews, you need to understand exactly what the engineering managers at and Huntington are looking for. The evaluation is rigorous and often highly specific to the hiring manager's current technological focus.

Resume Defense and Project Architecture

Your resume is the primary roadmap for the interview. Managers at and Huntington will pick apart your past projects to ensure you actually understand the systems you claim to have built. They are looking for candidates who can articulate the rationale behind their technical choices rather than those who simply follow instructions.

Be ready to go over:

• Design Decisions – Explaining why you chose a specific architecture (e.g., microservices vs. monolith) for a past project.
• Technology Trade-offs – Discussing why you utilized a certain database, framework, or cloud provider, and what alternatives you considered.
• Impact and Scaling – Detailing how your specific contributions improved system performance, reliability, or user experience.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Navigating legacy system migrations, integrating third-party financial APIs, or handling highly concurrent transaction processing.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through this specific project on your resume. Why did you choose to use that particular framework?"
• "Explain the architectural flow of the mobile application you built. How did you handle data persistence?"
• "If you had to rebuild this past project today, what technologies would you change and why?"

Core Programming and Technical Nuance

For the Programmer/Analyst 2 level, interviewers expect a solid foundation in computer science fundamentals. You may encounter managers who prefer to drill down into the granular details of programming languages and system memory.

Be ready to go over:

• Language-Specific Deep Dives – Answering highly detailed questions about the core language you are interviewing for (e.g., Java, C#, or Python), right down to the "bits and bytes."
• Live Coding Proficiency – Writing clean, optimized code on the spot, often using platforms like Coderpad.
• Data Structures and Algorithms – Applying the right data structures to solve performance bottlenecks.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Memory management, garbage collection nuances, and multithreading in high-throughput environments.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Given this problem statement, write a function in Coderpad to parse and sort this dataset efficiently."
• "Explain how memory allocation works under the hood for the primary language listed on your resume."
• "How would you optimize this block of code to reduce its time complexity?"

Cloud Infrastructure and Modern Tooling

Even if specific certifications are not explicitly listed on the job description, hiring managers frequently index on modern cloud experience. and Huntington is increasingly leveraging cloud environments, and familiarity with these ecosystems is a major differentiator.

Be ready to go over:

• Cloud Service Providers – Demonstrating practical knowledge of AWS, Azure, or GCP, particularly regarding compute and storage solutions.
• Deployment and CI/CD – Understanding how code moves from a local environment to production safely.
• Service Equivalencies – Being able to map your experience with one tool (e.g., Firebase) to enterprise equivalents (e.g., AWS S3 or DynamoDB).
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), container orchestration (Kubernetes), and cloud security best practices.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Do you hold any active certifications in AWS or other cloud platforms?"
• "We use specific cloud storage solutions here. How does your experience with Firebase translate to enterprise cloud storage?"
• "Explain your experience with setting up or maintaining CI/CD pipelines for your previous teams."

6. Key Responsibilities

As a Software Engineer at and Huntington, your daily responsibilities blend hands-on coding with strategic system design. You will spend a significant portion of your time developing, testing, and deploying robust software solutions that meet the bank's rigorous security and performance standards. This involves writing clean, maintainable code, participating in thorough code reviews, and troubleshooting complex production issues as they arise.

Collaboration is a cornerstone of this role. You will frequently partner with product managers to clarify business requirements and with QA engineers to ensure comprehensive test coverage. Because and Huntington operates in a highly regulated industry, you will also work closely with security and compliance teams to ensure that all applications adhere to internal and external data protection guidelines.

Beyond immediate project deliverables, you are expected to contribute to the continuous improvement of the engineering culture. This means identifying technical debt, proposing modern architectural solutions, and occasionally mentoring junior developers. Whether you are modernizing a legacy banking application or building a net-new cloud-native service, your work will directly influence the operational efficiency of the bank and the digital experience of its customers.

7. Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be a competitive candidate for the Software Engineer role at and Huntington, you must possess a blend of strong technical fundamentals and excellent communication skills. The ideal candidate is someone who can independently drive technical initiatives while remaining highly collaborative.

• Must-have skills – Proficiency in at least one major object-oriented programming language (e.g., Java, C#, C++). A deep understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software design principles. Strong ability to clearly articulate technical concepts and defend architectural decisions.
• Experience level – Typically requires 2 to 5 years of professional software engineering experience. Past experience in building, deploying, and maintaining production-grade applications is expected.
• Nice-to-have skills – Experience with cloud platforms, particularly AWS. Active cloud certifications are highly regarded by some hiring managers. Familiarity with financial systems, banking protocols, or highly regulated environments is a strong plus.
• Soft skills – Exceptional conversational skills, a high degree of professionalism, and the resilience to handle rigorous, detailed questioning. You must be comfortable navigating ambiguity and proactively seeking clarity during technical discussions.

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How difficult is the technical interview process? The difficulty can vary significantly by interviewer. Some candidates report a conversational and straightforward experience, while others face rigorous, low-level technical grilling ("bits and bytes") and unexpected live coding challenges. Prepare for a difficult technical bar to ensure you are not caught off guard.

Q: Will I have to write code live? Yes, you should absolutely expect to write code live. Candidates have reported being asked to complete Coderpad challenges during rounds that were initially described as mere resume reviews. Always have your technical environment ready.

Q: Do I need AWS certifications to get hired? While not strictly required by the standard Programmer/Analyst 2 job description, some hiring managers heavily favor candidates with AWS or other cloud certifications. If you do not have a certification, be prepared to confidently discuss your practical cloud experience and how it translates to enterprise environments.

Q: How long does it take to hear back after the final interview? Communication timelines can be inconsistent. Some candidates hear back quickly, while others have experienced delays or ghosting. It is highly recommended to establish clear expectations for next steps at the end of your interview and to follow up proactively with your recruiter.

Q: Is this role remote or in-office? and Huntington hires for both Columbus, OH and Cincinnati, OH, as well as broader US-based remote or hybrid roles. You should clarify the specific working arrangement, location expectations, and team timezone with your recruiter during the initial phone screen.

9. Other General Tips

• Clarify the Agenda Early: Because communication from third-party recruiters can sometimes lack detail, politely ask the hiring manager at the start of the call what the structure of the interview will be. This prevents surprises like unexpected coding challenges.
• Defend Your Resume Confidently: Interviewers will probe your past projects deeply. Do not list technologies you cannot discuss at an architectural level. Practice explaining your technical choices clearly and concisely.
• Handle Interpersonal Curveballs Gracefully: You may encounter interviewers who are abrupt or who take unexpected phone calls during your session. Maintain your professionalism, stay composed, and continue to provide strong, focused answers.
• Bridge Technology Gaps: If an interviewer dismisses your experience with a specific tool (e.g., calling Firebase "just storage"), calmly and professionally explain the broader capabilities of the tool and how those concepts directly map to the technologies they use at and Huntington.

10. Summary & Next Steps

Interviewing for a Software Engineer position at and Huntington is a challenging but highly rewarding process. This role offers the opportunity to build resilient, impactful software within a major financial institution. By mastering your core programming fundamentals, deeply understanding the architecture of your past projects, and preparing for both behavioral and live-coding assessments, you will position yourself as a standout candidate.

Focus your final days of preparation on practicing your verbal explanations of technical concepts. The ability to articulate why you wrote a piece of code is just as important as the code itself. Stay adaptable, maintain your professionalism through any scheduling or communication hiccups, and remember that every question is an opportunity to showcase your engineering rigor.

The compensation data above reflects the typical range for the Programmer/Analyst 2 level at and Huntington. Keep in mind that exact offers depend heavily on your specific location, your performance in the technical rounds, and your overall years of experience. Use this data to anchor your expectations as you move toward the offer stage.

You have the skills and the background to succeed in this process. Continue exploring additional interview insights and resources on Dataford to refine your strategy. Approach your interviews with confidence, clarity, and a readiness to demonstrate your technical excellence. Good luck!