Intuit USA Staff Offer

Phone Screen (75 mins)

My phone screen began with 1-2 behavioral questions. Following this, I was presented with a standard coding problem, which I'd classify as a LeetCode medium. While I don't recall the exact prompt, it felt straightforward with follow-ups on system scalability and potential issues. The latter part of this round, about 20-25 minutes, was dedicated to AI questions, given my background in building AI applications. We discussed AI-native vs. non-AI-native apps, what LLMs are, how I use AI in my day-to-day life, and some of the inherent dangers of AI.

Onsite

Craft Demo (75 mins)

This round started with a 10-minute presentation where I shared a few slides about my background, hobbies, and proudest project. For the main task, I was given a SpringBoot application repository to set up in advance. It had some endpoints for data fetching, and my goal was to implement new APIs based on provided user stories. The interviewers were keen on my problem-solving approach, testing methodologies, and class design rather than just running code or adding unit tests. I completed the basic implementation and tested it with Postman, though I couldn't write unit tests in time. They mentioned it was acceptable to use ChatGPT for syntax, emphasizing the importance of knowing *what* and *how* to test.

System Design (60 mins)

This interview was a deep dive into the scalability and high-level design of the service I worked on in the Craft Demo. We discussed schema design extensively, weighing the pros and cons of various proposals. There were numerous follow-up questions on expanding the original service with more features, how the database would need to change, query performance considerations, optimizing searches with specific databases, and how to add indexes.

AI Accessor Interview (30 mins)

This round built upon the service from the Craft Demo by adding an AI-related follow-up. The service already used an LLM API, and I was tasked with writing an API to support an AI use case for recommendations. The discussion covered topics like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), LLM hallucination, and prompt engineering.

Hiring Manager (30 mins)

My final round was a standard hiring manager interview with the VP. This focused on behavioral questions, such as what excites me at work and what I consider my superpowers.

Two days later, the recruiter informed me that the team was extending an offer. Reflecting on the experience, I appreciated Intuit's focus on design and architecture for staff-level candidates, which felt more appropriate than an excessive focus on pure coding. Despite not fully completing the coding (e.2.e with unit tests) in both rounds, I received positive feedback, and the interviewers were a pleasure to talk to.