Preparing for an interview at Hatch requires a balanced strategy. Because the company sits at the intersection of professional engineering consulting and software development, your preparation must address both your technical execution and your ability to communicate effectively with diverse engineering teams.

Technical & Domain Competency – You must demonstrate a strong command of core software engineering principles, particularly in object-oriented programming (such as C# and C++), database design, and cloud architecture. Be ready to explain not just how you write code, but how your software integrates with physical engineering systems, control loops, or industrial workflows.

Practical Problem-Solving – Interviewers at Hatch value practical, real-world execution over abstract competitive programming tricks. Focus your preparation on describing how you structure code, manage memory, design databases, and troubleshoot complex system performance. Be prepared to walk through your past projects in granular detail.

Collaboration & Communication – Because you will work alongside civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers, you must prove that you can translate complex software concepts to non-technical stakeholders. Your ability to listen, ask clarifying questions, and drive a collaborative technical discussion is highly scrutinized.

Culture & Safety Alignment – Hatch is deeply committed to safety, professional integrity, and client relationships. You should be prepared to discuss how you prioritize quality and safety in your work, how you manage client interactions, and how you align your personal career goals with the company's broader mission of positive change.

The interview process at Hatch is structured to evaluate both your technical proficiency and your cultural fit. Candidates generally describe the process as professional, conversational, and highly focused on practical experience rather than high-pressure brainteasers.

The journey typically begins with an online application, followed by an initial screening phase. For many candidates, this includes a digital cognitive and personality assessment (such as a Plum assessment) or a pre-recorded video introduction where you answer a series of general behavioral questions. This phase helps the hiring team understand your working style, problem-solving approach, and basic communication skills before moving to live interviews.

Once you pass the initial screening, you will progress to live interviews, which are often conducted by a panel of engineers, project managers, and senior leadership. The first round is typically a technical interview focused on your resume, past projects, and core software engineering concepts. The second round often dives deeper into system design, situational judgment, and behavioral scenarios. Depending on the specific group, you may also be asked to prepare a short presentation or walk through a technical problem based on a real-world project scenario.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical progression from your initial application through to the final offer stage. Use this timeline to pace your preparation, ensuring you dedicate sufficient time to both the automated screening assessments and the deeply collaborative panel interviews that follow.

To succeed at Hatch, you must understand the specific competencies that interviewers are trained to evaluate. The hiring team looks for well-rounded engineers who can write high-quality code while understanding the broader context of industrial engineering projects.

Core Software Engineering & Architecture

This area evaluates your foundational computer science knowledge and your ability to build reliable, high-performance software systems. Hatch projects often involve long lifecycles and integration with legacy systems, making clean architecture and robust design critical.

Be ready to go over:

• Object-Oriented Design – Deep understanding of design patterns, SOLID principles, and clean code practices.
• Language-Specific Internals – Memory management, garbage collection, and concurrency model details in languages like C#/.NET or C++.
• Database & Cloud Systems – Relational database design, SQL query optimization, and Azure deployment architectures.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Multi-threading optimization, real-time data streaming, and hardware-software interface protocols.

Example scenarios:

• Designing a database schema to store and query millions of sensor readings from an industrial site efficiently.
• Explaining how to refactor a legacy C++ codebase to improve memory efficiency and prevent leaks.
• Discussing how you would architect a cloud-based dashboard on Azure to display real-time simulation data to global engineering teams.

Resume & Project Deep-Dive

Interviewers will spend a significant portion of the interview walking through your resume. They want to verify that you have hands-on experience with the technologies you list and that you can explain the "why" behind your technical decisions.

Be ready to go over:

• Technical Decision-Making – Why you chose specific frameworks, databases, or languages over alternatives.
• Project Execution – Your individual contribution to team projects, co-ops, or previous professional roles.
• Overcoming Technical Challenges – Specific instances where a project faced obstacles and how you engineered a solution.

Example scenarios:

• Walking an interviewer through a university capstone or previous work project, explaining the architecture and your specific coding contributions.
• Describing a time when a software tool you built failed in production or testing, and how you diagnosed and resolved the issue.

Behavioral & Culture Fit

Hatch operates as a professional services and consulting firm, meaning software engineers must be capable of working in multidisciplinary teams and interacting professionally with clients. This evaluation area focuses on your soft skills, teamwork, and alignment with Hatch's values.

Be ready to go over:

• The STAR Method – Structuring your behavioral answers by describing the Situation, Task, Action, and Result.
• Conflict Resolution – How you handle disagreements within a development team or with non-technical stakeholders.
• Client & Stakeholder Management – Translating technical requirements and managing expectations.

Example scenarios:

• Describing a time when you had to work with a team member from a different engineering discipline (e.g., structural or electrical) to solve a joint problem.
• Explaining how you handled a situation where project requirements changed rapidly due to client feedback.

As a Software Engineer at Hatch, your day-to-day responsibilities will span the entire software development lifecycle, with a heavy emphasis on collaboration and integration.

• Software Development & Design – Writing clean, well-tested, and maintainable code in languages such as C#, C++, or Python to support industrial applications, simulation engines, and cloud platforms.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration – Working closely with process, electrical, civil, and mechanical engineers to understand physical constraints and translate them into functional software requirements.
• System Integration & Deployment – Architecting and deploying applications on cloud infrastructure (primarily Microsoft Azure), ensuring high availability, security, and performance.
• Database Management – Designing, implementing, and optimizing relational databases (SQL Server) to handle complex engineering data, time-series sensor inputs, and project metadata.
• Client & Stakeholder Interaction – Participating in meetings with internal and external clients to gather requirements, present software demos, and gather feedback on active digital solutions.
• Quality Assurance & Code Review – Participating in peer code reviews, writing unit tests, and maintaining rigorous development standards to ensure the safety and reliability of software deployed to critical industrial environments.