Cloudflare Interview Experience — Software Engineer (Fullstack, Frontend Heavy) - Bengaluru
Summary
I interviewed with Cloudflare for a Software Engineer (Fullstack, Frontend Heavy) role in Bengaluru, encompassing several technical and behavioral rounds, and was ultimately rejected due to insufficient completion speed in the live coding round, despite an otherwise positive experience.
Full Experience
I applied to Cloudflare in July and was shortlisted for an initial Hiring Manager round in October. The process felt slow initially but picked up pace quickly. All rounds were virtual, and I have about 8 years of experience.
My interview loop started with a Hiring Manager Round (30 mins), which was mostly a resume walkthrough where we discussed my current role, projects, responsibilities, and how my experience aligned with what they were looking for. It was a casual conversation, focused more on role-fit than grilling me technically. I received an email to schedule the Technical Phone Screen (TPS) two days later.
The Technical Phone Screen – JavaScript (45 mins) involved a basic coding question that needed to be solved without using loops, emphasizing JS recursion or functional basics, with a small extension. I finished this in about 30 minutes, and the interviewer was very helpful. I was selected for panel interviews the same day.
Next was the Orange Cloud Round (Behavioral) – 30 mins, which focused on Cloudflare’s values. I was asked questions like 'Tell me about a mistake I made and what I learned,' 'Something I learned outside my work,' and 'Fun/challenging situations in my career.' This round was clearly about culture-fit and mindset.
The System Design & Architecture (1 hour) was an exceptional round. Instead of a typical generic system design problem, the interviewer deep-dived into projects from my resume, discussing architecture, decisions, tradeoffs, and potential improvements. It felt more like an engineering discussion than an interview.
Finally, the App Coding Round – React + TypeScript (1 hour) required me to have an environment ready with npm, nvm, and React installed. I was given a React + TS app repository with a mock UI and API and asked to implement four frontend tasks. I was allowed to use Google, documentation, and StackOverflow but not AI tools. I managed to complete Task 1 and Task 2, and almost finished Task 3, but ran out of time. Task 4 was untouched. Although the interviewer understood my approach, I was ultimately rejected. I strongly believe the live coding round, specifically my execution speed, was the reason for the rejection. Finishing only 2/4 tasks wasn't sufficient.
Interview Questions (3)
Tell me about a significant mistake you made in your career or a project and what valuable lessons you learned from that experience.
Discuss something new or interesting you have learned outside of your professional work and how you approached learning it.
Describe some fun or particularly challenging situations you've encountered in your career and how you navigated them.
Preparation Tips
Based on this experience, if I were to prepare for Cloudflare frontend roles again, I would focus on being extremely fast with React basics and practicing writing code efficiently under significant time pressure. I would also anticipate system design rounds to be practical and deeply tied to real-world projects, and behavioral rounds to be heavily values-based. The app coding round proved to be a critical factor, and I would prioritize execution speed as much as correctness.