A Software Engineer at ForeFlight is responsible for building and maintaining the highly reliable, safety-critical flight planning and navigation applications used by pilots, flight crews, and aviation departments worldwide. Because our products are actively relied upon in the cockpit and during flight operations, engineering here demands an exceptional commitment to precision, performance, and offline-first capabilities. You will work on complex systems that translate massive amounts of geospatial, weather, and aeronautical data into intuitive, real-time visual interfaces and highly optimized APIs.

In this role, your work directly impacts flight safety and operational efficiency. Whether you are optimizing backend routing engines, developing robust mobile features for iOS, or scaling cloud infrastructure to handle millions of concurrent requests, you are solving problems where latency and accuracy are paramount. ForeFlight operates within the broader Boeing ecosystem, combining the agile, fast-paced environment of a tech-focused product company with the scale and stability of a global aviation leader.

Our engineering culture values clean code, thorough testing, and collaborative problem-solving. As a Software Engineer, you will collaborate closely with product managers, QA specialists, and fellow developers to deliver features that make flying safer and easier. You do not need to be a pilot to succeed here, but you must possess a deep curiosity for solving complex, multi-dimensional technical challenges and a passion for high-quality software craftsmanship.

The questions you will encounter during the ForeFlight hiring process are designed to evaluate your fundamental programming knowledge, practical system-building skills, and behavioral alignment with our engineering culture. These questions are compiled from real candidate experiences and represent the core concepts you should master before your interviews.

Coding & Algorithms

These questions assess your understanding of core data structures, memory management, and algorithmic efficiency.

• Implement a custom singly linked list and write a function to reverse it in place.
• Given a string containing nested parentheses, write an algorithm to validate if the structure is balanced.

To succeed in the ForeFlight interview process, you must demonstrate a balance of theoretical computer science fundamentals and highly practical, real-world software engineering skills. We evaluate candidates across four primary dimensions.

Core Technical Proficiency – You must possess a strong grasp of fundamental programming concepts, data structures, and language-specific best practices. Be ready to write clean, maintainable code during live sessions and explain your choices in languages like Java, Swift, or JavaScript.

Pragmatic Problem-Solving – We value engineers who can break down complex, ambiguous problems into structured, manageable components. You should focus on building simple, working solutions first, and then iteratively optimize them for edge cases and performance.

Code Quality & Craftsmanship – Writing code that works is only the first step. You must show that you prioritize readability, maintainability, comprehensive testing, and adherence to clean coding standards, treating code reviews as collaborative learning opportunities.

Collaboration & Adaptability – Because our engineering teams work closely across disciplines, your ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and receive constructive feedback is vital. We look for candidates who are humble, eager to learn, and highly collaborative.

The interview process for a Software Engineer at ForeFlight is structured to evaluate both your immediate coding capabilities and your long-term potential as a team member. While the exact steps can vary slightly depending on the specific team and seniority level, the overall sequence remains highly consistent, focusing on transparency and practical evaluation.

The journey typically begins with an initial application review, followed by a structured screening phase. For many candidates, this initial phase involves a group information session where recruiters introduce ForeFlight's engineering culture, followed immediately by a timed online technical assessment. Alternatively, some teams initiate the process with a practical take-home coding assignment designed to mirror real-world tasks you would perform on the job.

Once you successfully pass the screening stage, you will move into the core interview rounds. These sessions are highly interactive and conversational, typically featuring a live code review of your previous submissions, in-depth technical discussions on database design or system architecture, and behavioral interviews with engineering managers. The process is designed to be a two-way street, giving you ample opportunity to ask questions and evaluate if ForeFlight is the right fit for your career.

The timeline above illustrates the standard progression from your initial application through to the final decision. Candidates should use this roadmap to pace their preparation, ensuring they allocate sufficient time to practice core algorithmic coding before the initial assessment, and system design or code review strategies prior to the live rounds. While the process is thorough, maintaining a steady preparation rhythm across these distinct phases will help you present your strongest self.

Online Coding Assessments

The online assessment (typically hosted on platforms like Coderbyte) is your first opportunity to demonstrate your coding fluency. This timed test generally consists of three programming challenges of increasing difficulty to be completed within 60 to 75 minutes.

Be ready to go over:

• String manipulation – Parsing, filtering, and restructuring text data efficiently.
• Fundamental data structures – Building and manipulating linked lists, arrays, and hash maps.
• Time complexity analysis – Explaining the Big-O performance of your algorithms and choosing optimal approaches.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Dynamic programming, graph traversal algorithms, and complex bitwise operations.

Example questions or scenarios:

• Implementing a function to reverse a linked list and handle edge cases like empty lists or single-node lists.
• Writing an algorithm to parse flight plan strings and extract specific route coordinates while ignoring malformed data.
• Solving a medium-difficulty array manipulation problem using the two-pointer technique to optimize execution time.

Take-Home Projects & API Integrations

For certain teams, ForeFlight utilizes a take-home assignment instead of, or in addition to, the online assessment. This exercise typically involves interacting with a sample API to build a small, functional service or application.

Be ready to go over:

• API integration – Making clean, asynchronous HTTP requests and robustly parsing JSON responses.
• Error handling – Gracefully managing network timeouts, bad gateway responses, and missing data fields.
• Local environment configuration – Setting up local proxies or headers to handle security policies during development.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Implementing local caching mechanisms, offline data persistence, or complex state management.

Example questions or scenarios:

• Building a lightweight client application that fetches real-time airport weather conditions from a mock ForeFlight API and displays them in a structured list.
• Handling CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) configuration challenges when making fetch requests from a browser-based frontend to a secured endpoint.
• Writing unit tests to verify that your application parses API payloads correctly even when optional fields are missing.