Interview Experience: Bloomberg | Software Engineer | New Grad
📌 Job Role: Software Development Engineer
🎯 Job Level: New Graduate
🔢 Number of Rounds: 3
📜 Offer Status: Offer
📍 Location: NYC
👤 Candidate Name: Not disclosing due to signed NDA
Preparation Strategy
To prepare for the interview process:
For the phone interview:
Be comfortable with all data structures, popular algorithms, and coding syntax.
For the onsite:
Practice a ton of questions as Bloomberg recycles questions.
Do the following:
Bloomberg Phone Interview Questions (from LeetCode discussions)
Top tagged BB questions (min top 30) on LeetCode
If extra time needed: DP Patterns Post on LeetCode
Have basic finance knowledge, especially stock market tickers and prices.
For HR:
Research Bloomberg thoroughly.
Memorize their mission statement.
Reflect on why you applied.
Be prepared to discuss top reasons for wanting to work there, what you look for in a company, and your intended career path.
For Senior Manager round:
Review past projects and resume in depth.
Prepare for behavioral questions.
Be ready to discuss system design at a high level, including tradeoffs between throughput, latency, database design, API, caching, load balancing, multiple servers, system reliability, and expected load.
The LeetCode article "Bloomberg System Design Interview Round" was particularly useful.
Interview Process
The entire process took 1.5 months from late April to early June. I had a competing offer with another top N company at this point. The process consisted of the following rounds:
Phone Interview
Virtual Onsite
Senior Manager Round
After passing the first two technical rounds in the onsite, I was immediately moved to the HR round. I heard back immediately during the HR round that I made it to the senior manager round.
A week after the final round, I received a good offer, which I further improved by negotiating with my competing offer.
Round 1: Phone Interview
Complexity: Medium
This is a 45min-1hr coding interview. They may ask some behaviorals, but mostly this will be a coding skill filtering round. I got one OOP design question, with followups about different designs and tradeoffs. I'd expect one or two LC medium level questions here. Heard back for onsite in around 3 days.
The purpose of this round seemed to evaluate basic coding skills and approach to problem-solving. While the interviewer didn't delve deep into behavioral aspects, they were clearly assessing both technical competence and communication skills.
Key Questions:
OOP design question with followups
LC medium level questions
Learnings:
Be prepared for OOP design questions and medium-level LeetCode-style problems. Make sure to discuss your thought process clearly and consider different approaches before coding.
Round 2: Virtual Onsite
Complexity: Hard
The onsite consists of 2 45min-1hr coding interviews + 1 HR round. For the coding interviews I got 1 hashmap + 1 orderedDict/heaps + 1 Graphs DP + 1 OOP design question, most of them with followups about tradeoffs. Here you should expect a mixture of LC mediums and hards from random topics.
The technical interviews were intense, covering a wide range of data structures and algorithms. The interviewers paid particular attention to my ability to optimize solutions and discuss tradeoffs between different approaches.
If you pass these two technical rounds, you will be moved on to the HR round in literally 25 minutes, where they ask only behaviorals, why BB, what are your skills, what is your intended career path, competing offers, do you need visa, etc.
The quick transition to the HR round was a positive sign. The HR interview focused more on cultural fit and long-term goals rather than technical skills.
Key Questions:
Hashmap implementation and optimization problem
OrderedDict/heaps problem with runtime analysis
Graphs DP problem with follow-up questions
OOP design question with multiple approaches
HR round: Why Bloomberg? Career path? Skills? Competing offers? Visa requirements?
Learnings:
Be prepared for a wide range of technical questions, including data structures, algorithms, and system design. Brush up on your knowledge of hashmaps, ordered data structures, heaps, graphs, and dynamic programming. Also, be ready to discuss your motivations and career goals in the HR round.
Round 3: Senior Manager Round
Complexity: Difficult
Experience
This last round is the senior manager round which means it is a big deal for BB because they are taking their precious time out to interview you for an hour. Expect them to delve deep into your resume, and when I say deep I mean DEEP.
For me I talked about one of my internship projects, and then he expanded upon it asking how I would design a system if the product were to be hosted on a webapp. So yes, this is essentially a system design round + resume + some behaviorals.
The senior manager was extremely thorough in examining my past experiences and technical knowledge. He asked detailed questions about design decisions I had made in previous projects and challenged me to expand on them for different contexts.
My interview went 16 mins overtime, which I took as a good sign because he kept asking questions about my interests (super specific too, such as what programming language I'd want to use at BB, why I would take BB over my competing offer, etc).
Key Questions:
Detailed questions about past projects and technical decisions
System design for web applications based on my previous work
Specific technical preferences (programming languages, frameworks)
Reasons for choosing Bloomberg over competing offers
Learnings:
Review your resume and past projects thoroughly, especially technical details that you might have forgotten. Be prepared to discuss system design concepts and defend your career choices. The senior manager is looking for both technical depth and a genuine interest in Bloomberg specifically.
Conclusion
Bloomberg's interview process was rigorous but fair, focusing on both technical skills and cultural fit. The technical rounds covered a wide range of topics, from data structures and algorithms to system design. The behavioral rounds evaluated my interest in the company and my long-term career goals.
Having a competing offer significantly helped in the negotiation process, resulting in an improved final offer. Overall, thorough preparation across technical concepts, system design, and company research was key to success in this interview process.
If you're preparing for a Bloomberg interview, make sure to practice a variety of LeetCode problems, especially those tagged with Bloomberg, and develop a good understanding of system design concepts. Also, research the company thoroughly and be prepared to articulate why you want to work at Bloomberg specifically.