I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Wise (Budapest) in Feb 2019
Interview
I have been to 2 rounds: preliminary / motivation interview via video call, having passed that I was given homework / test.
This second one was a Hackerrank test with around 20-25 quiz questions and 4 or 5 coding task. The quiz was mainly in-depth questions about SOLID principles, design patterns and such, then some algorithms for coding.
I had 5 days to submit the online task, but only 90 minutes (no breaks) to finish once started.
I strongly suggest to practice on Hackerrank before starting, so that you get used to the input/output system you'll have to work with. Opening an IDE can also be very helpful for avoiding syntactical errors.
I've learned the importance of these advices by my own mistake - got stuck and ran out of time. Thus, I didn't make it to the next round, but, as far as I know, there would have been 1 or 2 technical interviews in person, and then one with HR.
Also, since TW is a financial institution, they do a background screening, which takes about 2 weeks.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
validate whether the input can be a binary search tree traversal
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Wise (Budapest) in Dec 2018
Interview
Applied for the job online on the company website. Carried on a 6-round interview process:
1. Contacted by company's recruiter via e-mail, describing the hiring process and invited for an initial online test on HackerRank.
2. Next round was a phone screen with another recruiter from the company, having an chat about the company, the role, the culture and my motivation and experience.
3. Next round was a tech interview with one of the senior developers at the company. General conversation about the role, my professional experience and asked different questions which were focusing on my approach to different problems and knowledge on things like transactions, automated testing, dependency injection (a few I remember now)
- Next round was a back-to-back tech and product interview.
4. Tech: online tech interview with the team lead and one of the senior developers. Questions on concepts, like bean validation, dependency injection, testing then doing a coding based on different requirements specified by the guys. No point for specifics here, the idea was to see my way of thinking when it comes to designing structures and processes for a problem.
5. Interview with the product manager
6. Final round with the engineering lead. Conversation about concepts like unit and integration testing, microservices: how I would approach the splitting of a monolithic app to microservice(s). What tools I like to use and why. (just to name a few questions I remember)
Overall experience is more than great, first time I feel a company knows exactly what they are looking for and focusing on mindset and way of thinking as opposed to testing only algorithms and popular technology related knowledge with no real reasons.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Q: How would you split a monolithic application to microservice(s)? (open-ended)
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Wise (Tallin) in Nov 2018
Interview
- Sent my application through their Job portal
- Had a first discussion online with the recruiter
- Passed an online exam
After that, as I had another offer and needed to give them a final answer within a week, I asked my recruiter if the process could be done within one week (4 interviews left). He made it!
- Technical interview with two software engineers
- Product interview with two product managers
- Motivation Interview with a Tech Lead (it could have been an Engineering VP as well but none was available within my timeframe)
At that point the recruiter told me they would make an offer
- Last step, call to inform me about the final offer!
If you want to prepare for their interviews, read on their blog post about application and interview tips for engineers applying to transferwise, visit the other links they give, read about TransferWise company mindset and teams setup, download and try their app. This should help you a lot to figure out if TransferWise is a good option for you and with the interview process as well.