Top 20
Prep plan
Updated weekly · Last refresh Oct 17

Substack Software Engineer Interview Questions

The questions to prepare for a Substack Software Engineer interview. Questions from real interview reports rank first. Updated daily.

20questions
~3htotal time
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1
CodingStart here. 6 questions · ~60 min
Key-Value Store ImplementationMedium
Practice

Implement Substack's in-memory key value store with separate chaining for average O(1) updates, lookups, and deletes.

Data StructuresSubstack
TF-IDF Document FrequencyMedium
Practice

Compute document frequency and logarithmic inverse document frequency for every token in a corpus.

deduplicationaggregationAlgorithmsSubstack
Range Updates Data StructureHard

Tests ability to design efficient data structures for range operations.

efficiencySubstack
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2
System Design7 questions · ~70 min
Rolling Data and ComplexityHard

Evaluates your data-structure selection and complexity reasoning for time-windowed workloads.

Substack
Caching and PrecomputationMedium

Evaluates ability to improve performance using caching strategies and precomputation.

cachingoptimizationSubstack
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3
Behavioral & Leadership4 questions · ~40 min
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4
More topics3 questions · ~30 min
React Class Components ConsiderationsMedium

Assesses understanding of React component architecture and lifecycle trade-offs.

reactSubstack
SQL for Subscription TransitionsMedium

Tests ability to model subscription state transitions and data integrity in SQL.

sqlSubstack
Component Lifecycles vs HooksMedium

Assesses React expertise and decision-making around lifecycle management patterns.

reactSubstack
Hands-on SQL practiceWrite and run real queries in the editor. 3 drills · ~30 min
The finish line: interview-readyComplete all 20 questions plus 3 hands-on drills to finish this plan.