We're growing our engineering teams across London and New York and we want every candidate to have the opportunity to present their best self.

Our interview process isn’t a secret and we believe setting expectations will set people up for success. If you're considering applying to Sequence or if you're already in the process, this post is for you.

How do we assess engineering candidates?

We're looking for engineers who are ambitious and take ownership in identifying problems and achieving outcomes. They deeply care about the quality of the product we're building and delivering a best-in-class experience to our customers.

We use Our Values and Our Engineering Principles to shape how we work and the decisions we make.

We assess performance across both behavioural and technical fit:

• What is behavioural fit? Some examples: is the candidate customer-focused? Do they ask thoughtful questions? Are they collaborative? Are they a clear communicator? Are they receptive to feedback? Would you want to work with this person on your current project?
• What is technical fit? We have a technical assessment rubric which sets expectations for each level.

What’s the process?

Here’s our interview process today:

1. Initial call (30 mins)
2. Technical interview (60 mins)
3. Product interview (30 mins)
4. System design interview (30 mins)
5. Founder interview (30 mins)
6. Offer

The whole process typically takes about 1-2 weeks.

Initial call

How does it work?

In this call we want to get to know you better, understand your experience, and share more about Sequence and the role. We’ll answer your questions and assess alignment on both sides.

How to prepare

Be prepared to discuss your experience, key achievements and motivations.

Technical interview

Note that we might experiment with this stage a little, but the broad strokes will be the same. If you have any questions, please drop us an email!

How does it work?

The technical interview is a 1 hour pair programming session with one or two engineers from our team. At the start of the session, we'll share a set of product requirements similar to something you might work on at Sequence. You'll implement some functions or classes and write a test suite as you build.

The exercise is designed to be approachable, and give you the opportunity to show off the coding skills we value in our daily life at Sequence. We won’t ask you to implement obscure algorithms or ask trick questions. We’ve all completed this task ourselves!

During the interview:

• Your goal is to write clear code that works. Focus on correctness, readability, and testing over performance, and pick whatever approach you think you can get working the quickest. We won’t ask you to find the most efficient possible solution to a problem, but we might ask you to explain if your code could be written in a better way.
• Feel free to reference documentation, Google, StackOverflow, or any other resources, just as you would in your normal day-to-day work. If you use LLMs for assistance at any point, that’s okay, but please be open with us that you are doing so. These can be helpful but we may ask you to disable it if the tool is driving the solution instead of providing assistance.
• Use your language’s standard library or 3rd party code as much as you want, if you think it would be helpful.

We’ll reserve 5 to 10 minutes at the end for your questions about Sequence - this can be about the company, our engineering team, or anything else - it’s up to you.

How to prepare

Before the interview:

• Please set up your preferred environment for writing code and executing tests beforehand. You're welcome to use any programming language, but we strongly recommend using the language & tools you're most familiar and comfortable with. Please don't try to learn a new language the day before the interview!
• You don't need any particular frameworks, libraries, or databases. You just need to be able to execute code and run tests.
• We won’t quiz you about APIs, but having familiarity with your preferred language’s standard library and testing library will likely help you to be successful. You should be familiar with common operations on arrays, maps, strings and integers; and debugging effectively.
• We will ask you to screen share your IDE via Google Meet. Please test this beforehand to ensure you’ve set the appropriate screen-sharing permissions ahead of time (you can test run your screen sharing in a new Meet session at meet.google.com).

Questions to keep in mind during the interview:

• Do you understand the problem? We’d rather you ask clarifying questions than dive straight into the solution.
• Did you proactively and effectively test your own code? Make sure you’re covering corner cases and edge cases.
• Does the code follow typical language-specific conventions? Is it easily readable?
• Did you communicate clearly and share your thought process? Talk out loud and explain why you’re doing what you’re doing as you code. We like to hear the design decisions you’re making!

Product Interview

How does it work?

The product interview is a 30 minute discussion with our VP of Engineering to help us understand your product thinking and whether you'll thrive in our engineering culture.

We'll talk about Sequence, your experience working in teams and with customers, and how you’re leveraging AI in your work.

How to prepare

Spend some time with our demos, principles, and docs so you can speak to what Sequence does and the problems we’re solving.

Think through examples from your past work - particularly around team dynamics and customer interactions. We're interested in how you reflect on what worked and what didn't, what you did to improve things, and what you’ve learnt from working with customers. We recommend coming with thoughtful questions about Sequence or how we work.

We’re looking for:

• Clear communication
• Ownership and agency - proactively improving things rather than waiting for others
• Genuine curiosity about customer needs and building high-quality experiences
• Bias towards shipping and an awareness of tradeoffs

System Design

How does it work?

The system design interview is a 30-minute collaborative discussion with 1 or 2 engineers from our team. There's no coding involved - we're focused on architecture and problem-solving.

We'll work through a system design problem that's similar to something we've actually built at Sequence. You'll sketch out your ideas using a whiteboarding tool (we recommend Excalidraw or FigJam) and we'll ask questions along the way. We'll leave a few minutes at the end for any questions you have for us.

There's no single "right" answer - we're interested in how you break down problems, the trade-offs you consider, and how you communicate your thinking.

How to prepare

Brush up on distributed systems concepts. Be ready to discuss non-functional requirements and explain why you'd make certain trade-offs.

Please have a whiteboarding tool ready before the call so we can dive straight in.

During the interview

Think aloud and ask clarifying questions. We want to understand your reasoning, and this is meant to be a conversation, not a test.

Founder Interview

How does it work?

In this call you'll meet with our Co-Founder & CEO, Riya Grover. This is primarily a culture fit interview focused on understanding how well your behaviours and motivations align with our company’s core values. This is also a great opportunity for you to learn more about the company vision.

How to prepare

Come ready to have an open, honest conversation about what you’re looking for in your next role and what you value in a team. This is also a chance for you to assess whether we’re the right fit for you, so bring thoughtful questions.

What’s next?

If you're interested in joining us, check out our open roles. We're hiring across London and New York and would love to hear from you!