1. What is a Software Engineer at Ascension Energy Group?

As a Software Engineer at Ascension Energy Group, you are at the forefront of building the digital infrastructure that powers modern energy solutions. Your work directly impacts how energy data is processed, how systems communicate, and how operational efficiencies are achieved across our global footprint. You are not just writing code; you are developing robust, scalable microservices that keep critical energy platforms running smoothly and securely.

This role is highly collaborative and requires a strategic mindset. You will work closely with site leads, product managers, and other engineering teams to translate complex business requirements into elegant technical solutions. Whether you are optimizing backend services, designing new APIs, or untangling legacy systems, your contributions will have a visible impact on our daily operations and long-term technological roadmap.

Expect a dynamic environment where scale and reliability are paramount. The problems you will solve are rarely straightforward, often requiring you to navigate ambiguity and design systems that can handle massive data throughput. If you are passionate about leveraging modern technologies like Spring Boot and cloud-native architectures to drive the future of energy, this role will offer you both the challenge and the platform to do your best work.

2. Common Interview Questions

The questions below reflect the types of technical and behavioral inquiries you will face during the Ascension Energy Group interview process. They are designed to illustrate patterns and core themes rather than serve as a memorization list.

Backend and Framework Knowledge

This category tests your practical experience with our primary technologies. Interviewers want to see that you understand how to build robust, production-ready services.

• How does Spring Boot auto-configuration work under the hood?
• Explain the difference between monolithic and microservices architectures. What are the trade-offs?
• How do you implement global exception handling in a Spring Boot REST API?
• Describe a time you had to optimize a slow-performing database query.
• How do you manage configuration properties across different environments (dev, staging, prod)?

Coding and Problem Solving

These questions evaluate your ability to write logical, efficient code and your familiarity with standard data structures.

• Write an algorithm to find the first non-repeating character in a continuous data stream.
• How would you merge two sorted lists of energy reading timestamps?
• Implement a thread-safe singleton pattern in Java.
• Given an array of integers, find the maximum subarray sum.
• Write a function to validate if a given string is a valid JSON format.

Behavioral and Leadership

We assess how you work within a team, handle conflict, and align with our company values. Be prepared to share specific examples from your past experience.

• Tell me about a time you had to push back on a technical requirement from a product manager.
• Describe a situation where you had to quickly learn a new technology to complete a project.
• How do you handle situations where the project requirements are vague or constantly changing?
• Tell me about a time you mentored a junior team member or led a technical initiative.
• What are you looking for in your next role, and how does Ascension Energy Group fit into your career path?

3. Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Thorough preparation is the key to navigating the Ascension Energy Group interview process. Our interviewers are looking for a blend of deep technical expertise and the ability to communicate your thought process clearly. Focus your preparation on the following key evaluation criteria:

Technical Proficiency – This measures your hands-on ability to write clean, efficient code and your familiarity with our core tech stack. Interviewers will heavily evaluate your understanding of backend frameworks, particularly Spring Boot, and your experience building and maintaining modern microservices. You can demonstrate strength here by writing modular code and explaining the trade-offs of your implementation choices.

Problem-Solving and Ambiguity – Energy systems are complex, and requirements can sometimes shift. We evaluate how you approach open-ended, ambiguous problems. Strong candidates ask clarifying questions, break down complex scenarios into manageable components, and adapt their solutions when presented with new constraints.

System Design and Architecture – This assesses your ability to look beyond a single function or class and understand how entire systems interact. Interviewers want to see how you design for scalability, fault tolerance, and secure data flow. You demonstrate this by drawing clear system boundaries, choosing the right databases, and understanding network communication between microservices.

Culture Fit and Collaboration – We value engineers who are proactive, communicative, and easy to work with. Interviewers will assess how you discuss past projects, handle feedback during technical discussions, and articulate your career aspirations. Showing enthusiasm, asking insightful questions about the team, and maintaining a collaborative tone will set you apart.

4. Interview Process Overview

The interview journey for a Software Engineer at Ascension Energy Group is designed to be rigorous yet conversational. Your process will typically begin with a brief, relaxed phone screen with a recruiter. This 20-minute call is primarily to align on your background, explain the duties of the role, and ensure your expectations match the position. It is a great opportunity to ask high-level questions about the team and the company's current initiatives.

Following the recruiter screen, you will move into the technical evaluation phases. This usually involves an initial technical interview conducted via Zoom. This round often includes a coding quiz or technical discussion heavily focused on Spring Boot and microservices. The panel typically starts with a brief introduction to the company and project details before diving into the technical assessment. Expect this round to feel like a collaborative discussion rather than a rigid interrogation.

Candidates who perform well will be invited to a final round, which may take place virtually or "on campus" depending on the specific office location. This stage usually involves conversations with the hiring manager and a site lead. The questions here will cover a mix of typical IT scenarios, behavioral questions, and deeper architectural discussions. While the atmosphere is generally welcoming and smooth, the technical bar remains high, and you should be prepared for questions that test the depth of your experience.

This timeline illustrates the typical progression from the initial recruiter screen through the technical assessments and final leadership interviews. Use this visual to pace your preparation, focusing first on core coding and framework knowledge, and later shifting your attention to system design and behavioral narratives. Keep in mind that specific stages may vary slightly depending on the region and the hiring team's immediate needs.

5. Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed in your interviews, you need to understand exactly what the hiring team is looking for across different technical and behavioral domains. At Ascension Energy Group, we focus on practical, real-world engineering skills rather than obscure academic trivia.

Backend Frameworks and Microservices

Because our infrastructure relies heavily on distributed systems, your mastery of backend technologies is critical. Interviewers want to ensure you can hit the ground running with our existing stack and contribute to architectural improvements. Strong performance means not just knowing the syntax, but understanding the underlying principles of the frameworks you use.

Be ready to go over:

• Spring Boot fundamentals – Dependency injection, application context, and configuring beans.
• Microservices communication – RESTful APIs, asynchronous messaging, and handling network partitions.
• Data persistence – Integrating with relational and NoSQL databases, managing transactions, and optimizing queries.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Service discovery, circuit breakers, and containerization orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through how you would secure a new REST API built with Spring Boot."
• "Explain a time you had to troubleshoot a performance bottleneck in a microservice architecture."
• "How do you handle data consistency across multiple independent services?"

Algorithmic Problem Solving

While we do not typically ask overly complex competitive programming questions, we do expect you to write clean, optimal code to solve standard software engineering problems. This area evaluates your logical thinking, familiarity with data structures, and ability to translate thoughts into working code.

Be ready to go over:

• Data structures – Arrays, hash maps, trees, and graphs, and knowing when to use each.
• String manipulation and parsing – Common tasks involving data transformation and sanitization.
• Algorithmic complexity – Analyzing the time and space complexity (Big O) of your solutions.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Dynamic programming or complex graph traversal algorithms.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Write a function to process and filter a large dataset of energy consumption metrics."
• "Given a stream of incoming events, how would you design an algorithm to detect anomalies in real-time?"
• "Optimize this piece of legacy code that currently runs in O(N^2) time."

Navigating Ambiguity and System Design

Some past candidates have noted that our questions can occasionally feel open-ended or lack concrete constraints. This is intentional. We want to see how you operate when you don't have all the answers upfront. Strong candidates take the lead, ask clarifying questions, and structure the conversation logically.

Be ready to go over:

• Requirement gathering – Identifying the core problem before jumping into technical solutions.
• Scalability and trade-offs – Choosing between consistency and availability, or deciding when to cache data.
• System monitoring – Designing for observability, logging, and alerting.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Multi-region deployment strategies and disaster recovery planning.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a system to ingest and process telemetry data from thousands of remote sensors."
• "If our primary database goes down, how should our microservices react?"
• "How would you approach a project where the business requirements are still evolving?"

6. Key Responsibilities

As a Software Engineer at Ascension Energy Group, your day-to-day work will revolve around building, maintaining, and scaling the software that supports our core operations. You will spend a significant portion of your time designing and implementing backend services, writing automated tests to ensure reliability, and participating in code reviews to maintain high engineering standards. You are expected to take ownership of your code from development through deployment and monitoring in production.

Collaboration is a massive part of this role. You will frequently partner with product managers to define technical requirements and work alongside front-end engineers, data scientists, and DevOps teams to deliver end-to-end features. Regular interactions with site leads will ensure that the software you build aligns with the physical and operational realities of our energy facilities.

Beyond writing code, you will also be responsible for driving technical initiatives. This might involve migrating legacy monolithic applications into modern microservices, optimizing database queries to reduce latency, or mentoring junior engineers. You will be expected to stay up-to-date with industry best practices and proactively suggest improvements to our tech stack and development workflows.

7. Role Requirements & Qualifications

To thrive in this position, you need a solid foundation in software engineering principles and a track record of delivering high-quality backend systems. We look for candidates who balance technical depth with strong communication skills.

• Must-have skills – Proficiency in Java and Spring Boot.
• Must-have skills – Deep understanding of microservices architecture and RESTful API design.
• Must-have skills – Experience with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and ORM frameworks.
• Must-have skills – Strong problem-solving abilities and a collaborative mindset.
• Nice-to-have skills – Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Nice-to-have skills – Experience in the energy sector or working with IoT/telemetry data.
• Nice-to-have skills – Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment strategies.

Most successful candidates bring several years of professional software development experience, typically having navigated the complexities of scaling applications in a corporate or enterprise environment. However, we value demonstrated ability and problem-solving over strict years of experience.

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How difficult are the technical interviews? The difficulty can vary, but generally, candidates describe the process as rigorous but fair. The technical assessments focus heavily on practical skills like Spring Boot and microservices rather than obscure algorithmic puzzles. Expect a conversational tone where your thought process is just as important as the final answer.

Q: How much preparation time should I dedicate? Most successful candidates spend 1–2 weeks reviewing core Java concepts, Spring Boot fundamentals, and practicing standard system design scenarios. If you are already working heavily in this stack, a few days of focused review on architectural trade-offs and behavioral stories should be sufficient.

Q: What is the atmosphere like during the interviews? Recent candidates report a welcoming and smooth conversational style, especially during the final rounds with hiring managers and site leads. The goal is to simulate a real working discussion. However, be prepared to drive the conversation if a question feels open-ended.

Q: How long does the entire interview process take? Typically, the process takes about 2 to 4 weeks from the initial recruiter screen to a final offer decision. Delays can occasionally happen depending on the availability of the panel and site leads, but the recruiting team generally moves efficiently.

Q: Are the roles remote, hybrid, or onsite? This depends heavily on the specific team and location. Some roles offer remote flexibility, while others require a hybrid presence, especially those that interface closely with physical site leads. Clarify the specific working arrangement for your target role during the initial recruiter call.

9. Other General Tips

To maximize your chances of success, keep these strategic tips in mind as you prepare for your conversations with our team:

• Drive the Conversation: Because some interviewers may ask open-ended questions, do not wait for them to extract information from you. Proactively explain your assumptions, outline your approach, and narrate your technical decisions.
• Master Your Stack: Since Spring Boot and microservices are explicitly tested, ensure you can speak comfortably about their internal workings, not just surface-level syntax.

• Clarify Ambiguity: If a question feels vague, treat it as a requirement-gathering exercise. Ask clarifying questions to define the scope before you start designing a solution or writing code.
• Prepare Thoughtful Questions: Use the end of the interview to ask the panel about their current technical challenges, the team's roadmap, or how the software interacts with the physical energy infrastructure.

• Structure Your Behavioral Answers: Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to keep your stories concise and impactful. Focus specifically on the technical complexity you navigated and the business impact you delivered.

10. Summary & Next Steps

Joining Ascension Energy Group as a Software Engineer offers a unique opportunity to build mission-critical software that powers the future of energy. You will be challenged to solve complex problems at scale, working alongside talented peers and site leads who rely on your technical expertise. By preparing thoroughly for our specific evaluation areas—particularly backend architecture, Spring Boot, and handling ambiguity—you will position yourself as a strong, capable candidate.

This salary module provides an aggregated view of compensation trends for software engineering roles within our industry context. Use it to understand the typical base ranges and total compensation structures, which will help you set realistic expectations and navigate offer discussions confidently when the time comes.

Remember that the interview is a two-way street. We want to get to know your technical style and problem-solving approach just as much as you want to learn about our engineering culture. Approach each round as a collaborative discussion rather than a test. For more detailed insights, peer experiences, and targeted practice scenarios, continue exploring resources on Dataford. Trust in your preparation, stay confident, and we look forward to speaking with you soon.