To succeed in the Relace interview process, you must demonstrate a balance of technical depth, product empathy, and collaborative execution. We want to see how you think, how you build, and how you communicate your ideas.

Technical Excellence – You should have a strong command of modern software engineering practices, clean code principles, and system architecture. Be prepared to explain the "why" behind your technical decisions, including the trade-offs of different frameworks, database choices, and algorithms.

Product & Growth Empathy – At Relace, engineers are highly aligned with user needs. Whether you are building internal developer tools or user-facing interfaces, you should demonstrate an understanding of how your technical choices impact the end-user experience and overall business metrics.

Autonomy & Ownership – We look for self-starters who can navigate ambiguity and take projects from concept to completion. You should be comfortable scoping requirements, collaborating with non-technical stakeholders, and driving execution independently.

The interview process at Relace is designed to evaluate your technical capabilities, problem-solving methodology, and cultural alignment in a structured, transparent manner. We aim to make the process collaborative and reflective of the actual day-to-day work you will do here.

The journey begins with an initial conversational screen with a recruiter to discuss your background, career goals, and alignment with the company's mission. Following this, you will progress to a technical screen, which typically involves a hands-on coding or system design discussion. The final stage is a comprehensive onsite loop (conducted virtually or in-person at our San Francisco office) where you will dive deep into architecture, coding, collaboration, and behavioral scenarios with various team members.

The timeline above outlines the typical progression from your initial contact to the final offer stage. Candidates should use this sequence to pace their preparation, focusing first on core coding and system design fundamentals before moving on to behavioral and role-specific deep dives. While the exact duration can vary based on candidate availability, we strive to move efficiently through all stages.

Depending on the specific Software Engineer track you are interviewing for, your technical evaluations will focus on different core competencies.

Frontend & Product Engineering

For frontend-focused roles, we evaluate your ability to build highly responsive, accessible, and performant user interfaces. We want to see how you manage complex state, optimize rendering performance, and collaborate with design systems.

Be ready to go over:

• State Management – Best practices for managing client-side and server-side state in modern frameworks like React.
• Performance Optimization – Techniques for minimizing bundle sizes, optimizing image assets, and reducing time-to-interactive (TTI).
• Web Standards & APIs – Deep understanding of DOM manipulation, CSS layouts, and modern browser APIs.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Canvas rendering, WebGL, custom build-tool configurations, and micro-frontend architectures.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Build a real-time search autocomplete component that handles debouncing, network errors, and keyboard navigation."
• "How would you optimize a dashboard page that renders thousands of real-time data points without locking the browser's main thread?"

Infrastructure & Scalability

For infrastructure and backend-focused roles, we assess your ability to design, scale, and maintain highly available systems. You should be comfortable discussing cloud architecture, containerization, and database performance.

Be ready to go over:

• Distributed Systems – Designing for high availability, fault tolerance, and eventual consistency.
• Data Modeling & Storage – Choosing between SQL and NoSQL databases, indexing strategies, and query optimization.
• CI/CD & Cloud Infrastructure – Infrastructure as Code (IaC), container orchestration (Kubernetes), and continuous deployment pipelines.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Zero-downtime database migrations, multi-region failover strategies, and custom network protocols.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a rate-limiting service that can scale horizontally across multiple data centers while maintaining precise limit counts."
• "How would you migrate a high-volume production database from PostgreSQL to a NoSQL alternative with zero user-facing downtime?"

Growth & Developer Relations

For growth-focused and developer relations engineering roles, we look for a unique combination of technical capability, data-driven decision-making, and strong communication skills. You should be comfortable building integrations, setting up analytics, and writing technical content.

Be ready to go over:

• A/B Testing & Funnel Optimization – Designing experimentation frameworks and analyzing user conversion funnels.
• API & SDK Design – Creating intuitive, developer-friendly APIs, SDKs, and documentation.
• Technical Communication – Explaining complex technical concepts clearly to both developers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Custom analytics tracking engines, building interactive developer playgrounds, and community-driven open-source contributions.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design an onboarding flow that dynamically personalizes the user experience based on the user's technical background, tracking conversion at each step."
• "Explain how you would structure a developer documentation portal to maximize developer activation and minimize time-to-first-API-call."