A Software Engineer at Metadata plays a pivotal role in building and scaling the industry's leading B2B marketing operating system. The platform automates manual tasks, optimizes campaigns, and drives revenue by integrating complex advertising channels, CRMs, and marketing automation tools. As an engineer here, you will be responsible for designing and implementing robust backend systems that can process massive amounts of data, orchestrate complex workflows, and integrate seamlessly with third-party APIs.

The impact of this position is felt directly by our customers, who rely on the platform's speed, reliability, and precision to run their marketing campaigns. You will work on solving highly technical challenges, such as optimizing database queries for high-throughput data pipelines, containerizing services for seamless deployment, and designing highly scalable REST and Graph APIs.

This role is ideal for engineers who thrive in a fast-paced environment and enjoy ownership over their code from design to production. At Metadata, you are not just writing code; you are building the foundation of an automated marketing ecosystem that demands high performance, clean architecture, and continuous innovation.

The following questions are representative of what you can expect during the Metadata interview process. These questions are drawn from real interview experiences of candidates who have gone through the loop and are designed to test your core engineering capabilities, problem-solving skills, and architectural understanding.

Java & Backend Frameworks

This category evaluates your depth of knowledge in Java, core object-oriented programming, and popular enterprise frameworks like Spring Boot and Hibernate.

• Explain the N+1 select problem in Hibernate. How does it occur, and what are the primary strategies to resolve it?
• How would you implement a custom Set data structure in Java from scratch, assuming the standard java.util.Set interface and its implementations were completely unavailable?

Preparing for an interview at Metadata requires a balanced focus on core backend engineering, database optimization, and system design. You should approach your preparation by focusing on the core principles of software engineering rather than trying to memorize specific coding puzzles.

Role-Related Knowledge – You must demonstrate a deep understanding of Java, Spring Boot, and Hibernate. Be ready to explain the inner workings of these technologies, including concurrency, memory management, and database mapping.

Problem-Solving & Clean Code – Interviewers look for code that is not only correct but also clean, modular, and easy to maintain. You should always write unit tests for your code, consider edge cases, and be prepared to discuss the time and space complexity of your solutions.

Database Proficiency – Expect to write raw SQL queries during live coding sessions. You should be highly comfortable with complex joins, aggregations, and query optimization techniques.

Architectural Thinking – For system design rounds, focus on scalability, API design, and microservices architecture. Be prepared to explain the trade-offs of your design choices, such as choosing between a monolith and microservices or selecting the right database for a specific use case.

The interview process at Metadata is structured to thoroughly evaluate both your technical capabilities and your alignment with the company’s working style. The process typically spans multiple rounds, moving from initial technical screening to deep-dive coding and system design assessments.

Candidates often report that the process is highly technical and demands hands-on coding at almost every stage. The engineering team values practical skills, so you should expect to build functional applications and solve real-world problems rather than focusing purely on theoretical academic questions.

The timeline above represents the typical progression for a Software Engineer candidate. It begins with a practical technical screening and progresses through deep-dive coding and architectural evaluations before concluding with a leadership and behavioral review. Candidates should use this timeline to structure their preparation phases, focusing first on core coding and gradually shifting to system design and behavioral alignment.

Java Core & Frameworks

This evaluation area focuses on your mastery of the Java language and your ability to build robust applications using modern frameworks. You must show that you understand how to write efficient, concurrent, and maintainable backend code.

Be ready to go over:

• Collections Framework – Deep understanding of lists, maps, and sets, including their underlying data structures and performance characteristics.
• Concurrency & Multithreading – Thread safety, synchronization mechanisms, and Java's concurrent utilities.
• Spring Boot & Hibernate – Dependency injection, transaction management, and object-relational mapping best practices.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Garbage collection tuning, custom class loaders, and advanced JVM memory management.

Example scenarios:

• "You are experiencing high memory usage in a Spring Boot application. How do you profile the JVM and identify potential memory leaks?"
• "Explain how Hibernate manages entity states and how lazy loading can lead to performance bottlenecks if not configured correctly."

Data Structures & Algorithms

This area tests your fundamental computer science knowledge and your ability to solve algorithmic problems under time constraints. Interviewers want to see how you approach problem-solving and whether you can write clean, bug-free code.

Be ready to go over:

• Data Structure Simulation – Implementing basic structures like linked lists, stacks, queues, or custom collections from scratch.
• Algorithmic Paradigms – Recursion, dynamic programming, sorting, and searching algorithms.
• Complexity Analysis – Accurately calculating the time and space complexity of your code.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Graph traversal algorithms and advanced tree structures like AVL or Red-Black trees.

Example scenarios:

• "Write a function to detect a cycle in a singly linked list without using extra memory."
• "Implement a custom Set in Java using an array under the hood, and optimize the lookup time."

Database Engineering & SQL

Given the data-intensive nature of Metadata's product, this is a critical evaluation area. You will be tested on your ability to design database schemas and write optimized queries.

Be ready to go over:

• Relational Database Design – Schema design, primary and foreign keys, and normalization rules.
• Complex Querying – Writing queries with multiple joins, subqueries, and window functions.
• Performance Tuning – Creating indexes, analyzing execution plans, and refactoring slow queries.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Database partitioning, replication strategies, and NoSQL database integration.

Example scenarios:

• "Given a schema with high write volume, how would you design your indexes to balance read and write performance?"
• "Refactor a query that takes several seconds to execute because of nested subqueries and missing indexes."

System Design & API Architecture

For mid-to-senior roles, this round assesses your ability to design scalable, distributed systems and clean, intuitive APIs.

Be ready to go over:

• API Design – Designing RESTful or Graph APIs that are secure, versioned, and easy to consume.
• Microservices vs. Monoliths – Understanding when to decouple services and how to manage inter-service communication.
• Containerization & Deployment – Using Docker and docker-compose to package and run services.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Message queues (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ) for asynchronous processing and distributed caching strategies.

Example scenarios:

• "Design a school registration system REST API, including the database schema, API endpoints, and containerization setup."
• "How would you design a system that integrates with multiple third-party marketing APIs, handling rate limits and transient failures gracefully?"