1. What is a Software Engineer at Hudl?

At Hudl, you are not just writing code; you are building the "team behind the team." As a Software Engineer, you join a company dedicated to powering the lifelong impact of sports. Your work directly serves coaches, athletes, and analysts—from youth leagues to the elite professionals in the NBA, Premier League, and NFL. You are responsible for creating the tools that capture video, analyze performance data, and share highlights, helping millions of users see their game differently.

The engineering culture at Hudl is defined by autonomy and velocity. Unlike traditional corporate environments where releases are infrequent, Hudl engineers deploy changes to production hundreds of times a day. You will work in cross-functional squads (alongside Product, Design, and QA) where you are trusted to solve problems your way. Whether you are working on the Fan team to improve livestreaming infrastructure, or the Human Performance group building data pipelines, your contributions have an immediate, tangible impact on the user experience.

This role requires a blend of technical excellence and a user-first mindset. You will tackle complex challenges involving video ingestion, large-scale data analytics, and real-time mobile interactions. If you thrive in an environment that values rapid iteration, honest feedback, and a passion for helping others succeed, this is the place for you.

2. Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparing for an interview at Hudl requires a shift in mindset. While technical skills are non-negotiable, the team places massive weight on how you work. They are looking for engineers who can operate with high autonomy and collaborate without ego.

Focus your preparation on these key evaluation criteria:

Technical Pragmatism & Craftsmanship Hudl values code that is readable, maintainable, and scalable over clever one-liners. Interviewers assess your ability to write "mature" code—software that handles errors gracefully, tests well, and can be maintained by others. You need to demonstrate full-stack proficiency (or deep backend/frontend expertise depending on the specific role) and an understanding of cloud-based systems.

Collaborative Problem Solving You will be evaluated on how you communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders. Since you will be working in a cross-functional squad, interviewers want to see that you can discuss trade-offs, accept feedback on your code, and iterate on solutions together. Being "right" is less important than being a productive team player.

Autonomy and Ownership Hudl’s culture is built on trust. You will be asked questions designed to test your ability to self-manage, handle ambiguity, and drive projects to completion without constant oversight. You must show that you can own a feature from conception to deployment.

Culture Alignment Hudl is consistently rated as a top workplace because of its values. They look for candidates who are "blunt but kind," willing to give and receive honest feedback, and genuinely interested in the success of the team over the individual.

3. Interview Process Overview

The interview process at Hudl is designed to be practical and reflective of the actual day-to-day work. It generally moves at a steady pace, and the recruiting team is known for being transparent about timelines.

Typically, the process begins with a Recruiter Screen to align on your background and interest in the role. This is followed by a Technical Screen, which may involve a take-home project or a live coding session depending on the seniority and specific team (e.g., Fan Team vs. Global Football Metrics). Hudl is well-known for utilizing practical coding exercises—such as a "Take-Home Project"—that simulate a real feature request. If you are given a take-home, the subsequent round will often be a Code Review interview where you walk through your solution, explain your design choices, and discuss how you would extend it.

The final stage is a Virtual Onsite Loop. This series of interviews dives deeper into your technical expertise, system design capabilities, and behavioral alignment. You will meet with potential peers, an Engineering Manager, and often a Product Manager. Expect a mix of whiteboard-style architecture discussions (for senior roles) and behavioral questions focused on past experiences. The goal is to see if you can thrive in their high-trust, rapid-deployment environment.

This timeline illustrates the typical flow from application to offer. Note that the "Technical Assessment" phase is often the pivot point; investing time in polishing your code submission or preparing for the live pairing session is the highest-leverage activity you can do.

4. Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed, you must be prepared to discuss specific technical domains and demonstrate your soft skills. Based on the role's focus on full-stack web and mobile features, here is what you should prepare for.

Practical Coding and Code Review

If you are assigned a take-home project or a practical coding session, this is the most critical technical evaluation. Interviewers are not just checking if the code works; they are checking if it is production-quality.

Be ready to go over:

• Code Structure & Readability – Organizing your code logically (e.g., separating concerns, using clear variable names).
• Testing – Writing unit tests is often mandatory or highly expected. Be ready to explain your testing strategy.
• Trade-offs – Explaining why you chose a specific library, database, or algorithm over another.
• Extensibility – How would your code handle new features? (e.g., "What if we added a new sport type?")

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk us through your solution. Why did you structure your components this way?"
• "If we had to scale this to support 100,000 concurrent users, what would break first?"
• "Here is a bug in the code you wrote. How would you debug and fix it right now?"

System Design & Architecture

For Senior and Software Engineer II roles, you will face system design questions. Since Hudl deals with video streaming and data analytics, the questions often mirror these challenges.

Be ready to go over:

• Data Modeling – Designing schemas for sports data (games, players, stats).
• API Design – Creating clean, RESTful (or GraphQL) APIs.
• Scalability – Handling high traffic spikes (e.g., Friday night football games).
• Cloud Infrastructure – Familiarity with AWS services (EC2, Lambda, S3) and databases (SQL, MongoDB).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a system that ingests live scores from thousands of high school games simultaneously."
• "How would you architect a video upload service that creates highlight reels automatically?"
• "Design the database schema for a tournament bracket."

Behavioral & Values (The "Hudl Way")

Hudl protects its culture fiercely. The "Manager" or "Values" interview will assess your emotional intelligence and professional maturity.

Be ready to go over:

• Conflict Resolution – resolving disagreements with Product Managers or other engineers.
• Mentorship – (For senior roles) How you elevate the team around you.
• Handling Failure – Times you broke production or missed a deadline, and how you recovered.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you received difficult feedback. How did you handle it?"
• "Describe a situation where you had to make a technical decision with incomplete information."
• "How do you balance technical debt with the need to ship features quickly?"

5. Key Responsibilities

As a Software Engineer at Hudl, your daily work revolves around delivering value to coaches and athletes. You will likely be part of a cross-functional squad focused on a specific domain, such as the Fan Team (livestreaming/ticketing), North American Sports (elite football/basketball), or Human Performance.

Your primary responsibility is to deliver full-stack features. This means you might spend your morning optimizing a backend query in C# or Node.js to speed up video retrieval, and your afternoon building a React component for a new coaching dashboard. You are expected to deploy code frequently—Hudl's infrastructure supports hundreds of deployments daily, so you will see your work in the hands of users almost immediately.

Beyond coding, you are a key technical voice in product discussions. You will collaborate with Product Managers and Designers to break down complex problems into shippable increments. For Senior Engineers, there is an explicit expectation to mentor less experienced engineers and propose technical solutions to ambiguous problems. You aren't just taking tickets; you are helping define what gets built and how it gets built to ensure reliability and scalability.

6. Role Requirements & Qualifications

Hudl hires for potential and engineering fundamentals, but there are specific baselines required to be competitive.

Technical Skills

• Must-have skills – Proficiency in modern full-stack development. The core stack typically involves C# or Node.js on the backend, and React with TypeScript on the frontend. Experience with cloud platforms (specifically AWS) and databases (SQL, MongoDB) is essential.
• Nice-to-have skills – Experience with video streaming technologies, Clojure (for specific data teams), Kafka, or mobile development (iOS/Android) can be a significant differentiator depending on the specific team.

Experience Level

• Software Engineer I / May Grads – Requires strong internship experience where you built across multiple levels of a web application (client to database).
• Software Engineer II – Typically requires 2+ years of full-stack experience, with exposure to cloud-based systems and a track record of advocacy for code quality.
• Senior Software Engineer – Requires extensive experience leading large-scale application development, mentoring teams, and solving complex architectural problems.

Soft Skills

• Collaboration – A "team-first" mindset is non-negotiable. You must be comfortable working in an agile, squad-based environment.
• User Empathy – A genuine excitement for solving problems for real people (coaches, athletes, fans).

7. Common Interview Questions

The following questions are representative of what candidates face at Hudl. They are drawn from typical interview patterns for this role. While you won't get these exact questions, they represent the types of discussions you will have.

Technical & Coding

• "Given a list of game scores, write a function to determine the winning streak for a specific team."
• "Refactor this piece of code to make it more testable and readable." (Often based on the Take-Home).
• "Explain the difference between SQL and NoSQL. Why would you choose one over the other for a roster management system?"
• "How does the browser rendering process work from the moment you type a URL?"
• "Write a component in React that fetches data from an API and handles loading and error states."

System Design

• "Design an API for a ticketing system that needs to handle high demand during playoffs."
• "How would you design a real-time notification system for game updates?"
• "We need to process uploaded game footage and transcode it into multiple formats. How would you architect this pipeline?"

Behavioral & Culture

• "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a design decision. What did you do?"
• "Describe a project where you had high autonomy. How did you prioritize your work?"
• "Have you ever made a mistake that affected a customer? How did you fix it and what did you learn?"
• "How do you handle working with a non-technical stakeholder who has unrealistic expectations?"

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need to know a lot about sports to work at Hudl? No. While many employees are sports fans or former athletes, it is not a requirement. What matters is your empathy for the user—understanding the coach's need to save time or the athlete's desire to improve. Domain knowledge can be learned on the job.

Q: What is the remote work policy? Hudl has a "flexible work policy." Many roles are fully remote (within specific regions like the UK or specific US states), while others are hybrid near hubs like Lincoln, NE, or London. The job postings emphasize that they trust you to get work done your way, whether that is at home or in an office.

Q: How "LeetCode-heavy" are the technical interviews? Hudl leans heavily toward practical coding over algorithmic puzzles. While you should understand basic data structures (maps, lists, trees), you are more likely to be asked to build a small application or refactor code than to invert a binary tree on a whiteboard.

Q: What differentiates a Senior candidate from a mid-level one? Seniors are expected to navigate ambiguity. A mid-level engineer might excel at building a feature defined by a ticket, whereas a Senior engineer helps define the architecture, anticipates scaling issues, and mentors others during the process.

Q: What is the "Hudl Tech Challenge" or Take-Home? This is a common step where you are given a prompt (often sports-related) and asked to build a solution on your own time. The key is not just functionality but code quality—treat it like code you would push to production.

9. Other General Tips

Review the "Hudl Values" Hudl takes its values seriously. Concepts like "We're a Family," "We're Blunt but Kind," and "We respectfuly disagree and commit" are not just wall art. Reference these values in your behavioral answers to show you have done your homework and align with their culture.

Focus on "Production-Ready" Code

Even if the prompt says "keep it simple," ensure your variable names are clear, your logic is sound, and you have included basic tests or a README explaining how to run it. This is the single biggest filter in the process.

Highlight Full-Stack Versatility Even if you prefer backend or frontend, Hudl values engineers who can jump across the stack when needed. Show willingness to learn new tools. If you are a C# expert, show openness to learning React, and vice versa.

Prepare Questions for Your Interviewers Since autonomy is big at Hudl, ask questions that show you care about the work environment. Ask about deployment pipelines, how the squad prioritizes work, or how they handle technical debt. This demonstrates you are a serious professional evaluating them as much as they are evaluating you.

10. Summary & Next Steps

Becoming a Software Engineer at Hudl means joining a team that is passionate, fast-paced, and genuinely cares about its users. Whether you are building livestreaming tech for the Fan Team or data pipelines for Global Football Metrics, you will have the autonomy to make significant technical decisions and the support of a collaborative, high-trust culture.

To succeed, focus your preparation on practical software engineering principles. Polish your ability to write clean, testable code, and be ready to discuss system design in the context of real-world constraints. Most importantly, bring your authentic self to the behavioral interviews—show them you are a learner, a collaborator, and someone who takes ownership of their work.

The compensation data above reflects the base salary ranges provided in job listings. Keep in mind that total compensation at Hudl often includes a Long-Term Incentive (LTI) award and potential bonuses based on performance. Use this range to anchor your expectations, but remember that specific offers will depend on your location and experience level.

For more deep dives into interview questions and community insights, check out Dataford. Good luck—you have the skills to make the team!