Bloomberg Interview SSE - Bquant | SF | 2026 | Reject
Summary
I applied online and interviewed for an SSE - Bquant role at Bloomberg in SF. I passed the technical phone screen, which included the 'Rotten Oranges' problem, but was ultimately rejected after the virtual onsite panel due to challenges faced during the system design round.
Full Experience
Interview Experience
Hello everyone,
Sharing my interview experience with my LC fam.
I applied online and received a recruiter email after a few weeks to discuss the opportunity. They liked my profile and scheduled a technical phone screen.
Phone Screen Interview
- Intro (5 mins): The interviewer asked about my background.
- Discussion (10–15 mins): High-level discussion about my experience.
- Coding Question: Rotten Oranges
We also discussed the time complexity for the solution.
I passed this round and was invited to a virtual onsite panel interview.
Onsite Round 1
1. Technical Panel (2 hours)
I was given some data and asked to build a CLI tool to search for words within the data.
Requirements:
- Index the data and store it in memory using a map.
- For a given input query, return:
- The rows where the word appears
- The row numbers
- The number of occurrences
- The results should be ordered by the number of occurrences.
This round had a 3-person panel, and the interviewers were very helpful. I was able to solve about 90% of the problem but had an issue with one of the return fields. The interviewer mentioned that I was very close and that it should be sufficient.
The last 10 minutes were spent discussing what they work on and the company culture.
2. System Design Round (1 hour)
I was asked to design a news feed application with the following requirements:
- News feeds arriving every few minutes
- Search functionality with results returned within 3000 ms
- Filtering and subscription features
This round was supposed to have a 2-person panel, but one interviewer joined 20 minutes late. Unfortunately, this is where things started to go wrong.
The late-joining interviewer began asking questions mid-discussion, which made it difficult to move forward with the design. Additionally, many of the proposed solutions were challenged with edge cases or requirements that were out of scope, making it hard to make progress.
Final Outcome
The next day, I received the rejection email — which I had already anticipated based on how the system design interview went.
Interview Questions (3)
Rotten Oranges
You are given an m x n grid where each cell can have one of three values: 0 representing an empty cell, 1 representing a fresh orange, or 2 representing a rotten orange. Every minute, any fresh orange that is 4-directionally adjacent to a rotten orange becomes rotten. Return the minimum number of minutes that must elapse until no fresh oranges remain. If it is impossible, return -1. We also discussed the time complexity for the solution.
CLI Tool for Word Search
I was given some data and asked to build a CLI tool to search for words within the data.
Requirements:
- Index the data and store it in memory using a map.
- For a given input query, return:
- The rows where the word appears
- The row numbers
- The number of occurrences
- The results should be ordered by the number of occurrences.
Design a News Feed Application
I was asked to design a news feed application with the following requirements:
- News feeds arriving every few minutes
- Search functionality with results returned within 3000 ms
- Filtering and subscription features