I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months.

Here's my experience of Bolt's interview process. I interviewed in March-April 2026. The process took 1.5 months in total.

Recruiter Screening round (30 mins): This was a 30 min interview. The recruiter, Irina, was super friendly. She asked me general questions, motivation to switch, to join Bolt and to relocate. She also helped me get clarity on the entire process by giving me details on each round, their duration and things that Bolt is looking out for. She did warn me about the difficulty in the rounds and Bolt's standards. Irina played a huge part in my success in the future rounds and was in close contact with me throughout the process.

iOS Technical round (90 mins, with iOS SSE): The round unfortunately took 12-14 days to schedule due to limited interviewer availability. This round judged my iOS fundamentals, however the focus was not just on theory but in depth knowledge. For e.g questions started with what is ARC and then went deep like edge cases where structs can be stored in stack memory and classes can be stored in heap memory. I had a lot of fun in this round and it felt like I was having a fun conversation around swift with the interviewer.

iOS Live Coding round (90 mins, with iOS SSE): This round required to code a simple app but with the focus on clean architecture and scalable choices. I performed best in this round. Note that you cannot use AI/code complete but can use google.

General Technical round (90 mins, with web SSE): This round tested general programming concepts not related to iOS. You can find these questions in some of the other reviews. Few examples include code review checklist, maintainable code. Then I was given a DSA problem which I had 45 mins to solve. The problem wasn't directly taken from leetcode and had a Bolt twist to it. I was able to get through the problem using a brute force approach and suggest an optimal approach.

Culture Fit round (75 mins, with EM): This was a behavioural round with a focus on the kind of work I have done, along with collaboration and adaptability. I thoroughly enjoyed this round. The interviewer was great at making me feel comfortable. The round was divided into 3-4 parts and in each part the interviewer asked me questions and then I was encouraged to ask my questions. Questions asked were:

• "Tell me about a time you led a project to completion"
• "Tell me a time you had to work through a conflict" etc.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the interview process. In each round, I felt welcome and at ease which allowed me to perform at my best and resulted in me getting an offer.

Technical:

• What is ARC?
• Edge cases where structs can be stored in stack memory and classes can be stored in heap memory?
• Class vs Struct?
• Weak vs unowned?

Behavioural:

• Tell me about a time you led a project to completion?
• Tell me a time you had to work through a conflict?