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Software Engineer, Backend Interview Experience - London, United Kingdom

September 1, 2025
Positive ExperienceNo Offer

Process

The interview process seems to change quite a bit, so make sure you look for more recent descriptions of the interviews. However, there were numerous rounds, starting with a recruiter screening, followed by an AI proficiency interview. This process is quite straightforward. However, if you don't have much experience with using Co-Pilot or Cursor, I would recommend practicing a bit beforehand by creating a boilerplate project and adding tests. Be careful to check your code for mistakes. Ultimately, this interview tests whether you can debug the mistakes that the AI makes and whether you understand what your code is doing.

Next, they gave me a "Programming Language Fluency" interview, a system design interview, and a behavioural interview. The Programming Language Fluency test was to implement a class that they had come up with. I didn't find it particularly difficult; however, I would make sure that your dev environment is set up with the correct language. For me, there was some confusion over the language to be used; however, the recruiters were very helpful when I asked them about it.

The system design interview was quite standard. I had to design a system to process card payments. This was a pretty straightforward system design interview, though I had read "System Design Interview: An Insider's Guide" in preparation for another interview, which did come in very handy.

Finally, the behavioural interview was pretty standard. However, it does come after having done the previous two technical interviews in one sitting, which I found quite taxing.

I didn't pass this one, but they did arrange a call to give me good feedback, which I did appreciate. I ended up failing the behavioural interview, but they gave me some good feedback as to why I didn't pass it, which has been helpful for future interviews.

The recruiters were extremely helpful whenever I had any questions, so do use them as a resource should there be any ambiguity. In fact, they were so pleasant that I left smiling even though I got rejected.

Questions

The AI fluency interview question was to "implement the backend for Canva / Google Docs".

The programming language fluency interview question was "implement a class for a comment section".

The System Design question was "design a payment system".

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Canva Software Engineer, Backend role in London, United Kingdom.

Success Rate

0%
Pass Rate

Canva's interview process for their Software Engineer, Backend roles in London, the United Kingdom is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive100%
Neutral0%
Negative0%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Canva's Software Engineer, Backend interview process in London, United Kingdom.

Canva Work Experiences