I applied online through the careers section of Bloomberg. The application was for an entry-level software engineer position at the Bloomberg London site. I needed to upload my resume and cover letter.

My language of choice for the interview was C/C++.

I had:

• One phone interview (1:1)
• Two video interviews (2:1)

Following this, I was called for an onsite interview at the London office and had three rounds of interviews there (two technical and one HR).

After the onsite interview, I had a final interview with the tech head at the London site.

1. Pointer basics.

2. Bracket matching: /* "(aa)bb" -> true "[ aa [ bbb ]" -> false "aa } bbb { c" -> false "aa [ bb () ]" -> true "[aa { ] cc } ]" -> false */

3. Design and implement a web browser that, at any given instance, can efficiently tell the top 5 visited websites based on the number of visits. This question is a variant of the LRU cache and can be optimally implemented using a map and a doubly linked list.

4. Run-length encoding of a string. See below for an example: aaaaabbbccd → a5b3c2d1 xyz → x1y1z1

5. Merge overlapping intervals. See below for an example: [1,3] [2,5] [8,9] → [1,5] [8,9] [1,3] [2,6] [4,99] → [1,99]

6. Given a binary tree, determine if it is a valid BST.

7. Implement a generic hashmap in C++. Ensure the use of templates, good hash functions, and be prepared to discuss design choices for handling collisions.

There will be behavioral questions. Make sure to prepare for the question: "Why Bloomberg?"