The Programhelp team has years of experience in technical job-hunting coaching, helping numerous learners transform their careers. Take student L, forexample. Once an accountant burdened by long hours and low pay, she switched to coding via a Bootcamp, driven by the desire for a better work-life balance intech. With our full support, this zero-base learner overcame challenges and secured a Stripe offer. Her Stripe VO interview experience is worth sharing.
Round 1: Coding
In a financial trading system, there are multiple accounts, each with a different initial balance. Your task is to write a function that, through a seriesof transaction operations, adjusts the balances of all accounts to a given target balance. You don’t need to find the solution with theminimum number of transactions, just a feasible one.
Input:
accounts: A list of integers representing the initial balance of each account.target: An integer representing the target balance that all accounts should reach eventually.
Output:
- A list of transaction operations, where each transaction operation is a tuple
(from, to, amount), indicating that an amount of money is transferred from the accountfromto the accountto.
Round 2: HM Chat
This round is a face-to-face conversation with the Hiring Manager. But remember, it’s not a casual chat. They are observing you closely.There are three core aspects: how well you fit into the team, whether your career plan is reliable, and how much you understand the position and the company’s business.
When preparing, dig out all the projects and skills in your past experiences that are relevant to the position and organize them into a clear storyline.When chatting, focus on how these skills can be applied in Stripe’s business scenarios. Also, study Stripe’s business modeland corporate culture in advance and naturally incorporate your understanding of them into the conversation, so that the interviewer feels that yougenuinely want to join the company, not just applying randomly.
Round 3: API Integration
Design a Currency Exchange Rate Service Component
Background:
Stripe handles global payments and money movement, requiring accurate, near-real-time currency exchange rates. This data comes from external third-party APIs.
External API Characteristics:
- Provides a
GET /rates?from=X&to=Yendpoint, returning{ "rate": ..., "timestamp": ... }. - Has strict rate limits.
- Fetching each currency pair requires a separate API call.
- Can be unstable or return errors.
Your Task:
Design a critical internal service component responsible for interacting with the external API and providing stable, reliable, and up-to-dateexchange rate data to other internal Stripe services.
Round 4: Debugging
The Debug session based on the Mako framework is all about finding flaws. There are two major pitfalls waiting for you right away. The first pitfall is thatthe program doesn’t check at all whether the file path is a directory. It directly treats the path as a directory, and it will definitelyreport an error when encountering a file. The solution is simple: add a path type judgment and proceed only if it’s a directory.
The second pitfall is more hidden. There is a missing function for handling specific abstract syntax tree (AST) nodes. When Mako parses the template, itgets stuck when encountering such nodes. At this time, you need to be familiar with the AST structure and complete the corresponding access function toenable the program to parse properly. During the debugging process, make use of means such as printing logs and setting breakpoints to quickly locate theproblem.
Round 5: System Design (Ledger service)
In this round of system design, Stripe takes a different approach. Other companies may focus on the macro architecture, but Stripe focuses on the detailsof API design. Don’t rush to draw the architecture diagram at the beginning. First, thoroughly discuss with the interviewer the corefunctions, performance requirements, and usage scenarios of the service. For example, is this Ledger service for internal use or provided externally?What should the throughput be? How to ensure data consistency?
After clarifying the requirements, design the service layer and the database accordingly. Don’t be vague in the API design. All the detailssuch as parameter types, return value formats, and error code definitions should be included. When it comes to database design, don’t justmention which database to use. Explain clearly how to design the table structure and how to build the indexes. Remember, keep communicating with theinterviewer throughout the process, confirm the direction while designing, and don’t finish the design in a rush only to find that you’ve gone in the wrong direction.
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