Just finished walking Stripe Five rounds of VO, share your character accumulation. I think the overall difficulty is medium. The Stripe SDE Interview is not a particularly tricky algorithm factory style, but the engineering details are very demanding. The interviewers communicated very smoothly, and there were no pressing questions. They were more interested in seeing whether your ideas are clear, whether your code is solid, and whether your design is reasonable.
The first round of Coding: Account Balance settlement issues
The first round is pure coding. The topic is Account Balance, which is essentially similar to LeetCode’s minimum number of transactions model. Given a set of account current balances and target balances, it is required to output a set of transactions so that all accounts eventually reach the expected value.
This problem does not require an optimal solution, nor does it require a minimum number of transactions, as long as a feasible solution can be constructed. The core method is to first calculate the net balance of each account, then separate the positive and negative numbers, use double pointers or queues to match them one by one, and generate transfer records. The logic is not complicated, but you should pay attention to boundary conditions, such as already balanced, single account outliers, empty data, etc.
There are two follow-ups in this round. The first one is how to achieve the minimum number of transactions. Here we need to talk about the idea of DFS/backtracking and pruning optimization. It does not have to be written out completely, but the core logic must be explained clearly. The second is the audit design, which asks how to verify whether the ledger is correct. You can dry run all transactions in memory first to generate the theoretical ledger status, and then compare it with the actual records in the database to output the differences. This question is obviously more focused on financial system thinking.
Second round of HM interview
The second round was the hiring manager interview, and the atmosphere was very relaxed. It mainly focuses on resumes and talks in depth about project background, technical decision-making, teamwork and conflict handling methods.
The focus is not on stereotype behavior issues, but on whether you can clearly express your thinking process, whether you understand trade-off, and whether your past experience matches the team. The whole thing is more like an in-depth technical chat rather than a standardized behavioral aspect.
The third round of API Integration
This round focuses on engineering practice. Given a specified warehouse, you need to clone it, call the specified API, and save the returned response.
The questions themselves are almost not difficult, but they test basic skills very much. For example, whether the README can be read quickly, whether the environment can be set up smoothly, whether exception handling is fully considered, and whether the code structure is clear. The core is to run the process completely, not to show off skills.
The fourth round of Debug (Mako debugging)
This round is a debugging question. Given a piece of code using mako, let you locate and fix the problem.
The two bugs are: the file path does not verify whether it is a directory, and the access function of a certain AST node is missing, resulting in an error when running. The key is to quickly understand the code structure, trace the calling logic along the error stack, clarify the dependencies, and then provide a repair plan.
This round is more like a real-life production environment troubleshooting than an algorithm question. Engineering reading ability is very important.
Fifth round System Design: Ledger Service
The last round is system design, designing a Ledger Service.
Never use high-level templates here. Stripe pays more attention to API details, such as how to define the interface, whether the parameters are reasonable, how to design the transaction ID, how to ensure idempotence, how to ensure consistency, and how to design the audit trail.
How to build the database structure, whether to adopt a dual accounting model, how to handle concurrent writes, and how to avoid repeated submissions will all be questioned in depth. If you only stay at the macro structure of load balancing, caching, and database layering, it is easy to get confused when asked about the details.
Interviews are fast-paced, so preparation in advance is really important.
We have been sorting out real interview questions from top North American manufacturers for a long time, and have special simulations for Coding, Debug, API Integration, and System Design. Targeted mocks will be done before the interview, and there will also be a VO process Real-time running support . In many interviews at large companies, what matters is not talent, but preparation intensity. If you are also preparing for a position in Stripe or other fintech/FAANG directions, you can plan your rhythm in advance and don’t bet on improvisation in a critical round.
