Software Developer Interview Process

Hi there! 👋 We look forward to meeting you!

Our interview process is structured to simulate typical day-to-day scenarios that you’d encounter at OpsLevel.  There won’t be any gotcha questions, but we have different interview slots that aim to cover the various aspects of your role and craft.  All slots are held remotely and don’t have to be scheduled consecutively, though they can be if you want.

We want to work with the best people at OpsLevel, so while recognize that our interview process is meticulous, it is a reflection of the high bar of excellence we hold ourselves to.

Changing jobs is an important milestone and we strongly believe that interviewing is a two way street.  Throughout the interview process, you will be meeting with lots of different OpsLevelers.  Please don’t feel shy about asking lots of questions.  We’re very transparent about what it’s like working here.

First Contact

1. Intro Call    

A 45 minute intro call with our one of our software dev managers. It’s a chat to get to know you better, learn about some of the projects you worked on in the past, hear what you’re looking for in your next role, and to tell you more about OpsLevel.

Virtual Onsite

1. Pair Programming Interview    

During this interview, you and another OpsLeveler will pair together for up to 90 minutes to build a small application from a defined set of requirements. It's meant to reflect the kind of collaborative, shipping-focused work you'd do day-to-day at OpsLevel.

The use of AI is required. OpsLevel is an AI-first engineering team, and all of our developers are expected to leverage AI tools as a core part of how they work. For this interview, you must use AI tooling. We don't prescribe which tool, use what you're most effective with, but be prepared to briefly explain your choice and how you typically work with it.

We're not evaluating whether the AI writes good code. We're evaluating you as the engineer directing it: how you break down a problem, how you craft and refine your prompts, how you review and validate AI-generated output, and how you recognize and correct mistakes before they compound.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Bring your own development environment and AI tooling, set up and ready to go before the interview starts.
• There are no trivia questions. You won't be asked to recite algorithms from memory.
• You should have comfort with basic data structures and how to reason about them, since you'll likely be evaluating what the AI produces through that lens.

2. System Design    

In this slot, you’ll be given a business problem description and asked to work with the interview to flesh out the requirements, create a data model, and  design a system to support its functionality.

For example, “A system where people can write 140 character messages and share them with friends” or “An online file conversion service”.

We recommend using a whiteboarding tool you are comfortable with. If you do not have a preferred tool, we will always have Zoom’s whiteboard functionality available during the interview.

3. Technical deep dive    

In this interview you’ll be talking to our CTO, Ken, about one or two technical projects you have contributed to or worked on in the past.  Come prepared for questions about technical decisions you made and the tradeoffs considered, how you participated in the decision-making process, and the impact you had on the project.  If you’d like to use some visual aids or drawing programs, those can be helpful but are not necessary.