Taro Logo

Software Developer Interview Experience

January 26, 2026
Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I applied online. The process took four weeks.

The frontend and backend interviews were great. The interviewers were calm and level-headed and allowed me to showcase my technical strengths. The hiring manager interviews were not as great. Different hiring managers have different ways of interviewing, and you're guessing what it is they want to hear. I think that GitLab needs to work on standardizing this process and training interviewers how to interview. In the first interview, the example story I gave was clearly not a fit for the interviewing. Perhaps they could have mentioned that and pivoted, or initially mentioned what they were looking for. In the second interview, I was given feedback for not mentioning things that the interviewer did not even ask. You can't have a candidate who was given incredible feedback on the technical stages, as mentioned by the recruiters and the hiring managers, and barely passing HM rounds. There's a clear mismatch here. Interviewing is a hard thing in general in the software engineering field, and it's something every IC and EM need to work on.

Questions

Vue and Rails-based code review.

Was this helpful?

Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 7 interview experiences for the GitLab Software Developer role.

Success Rate

14%
Pass Rate

GitLab's interview process for their Software Developer roles is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive43%
Neutral43%
Negative14%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for GitLab's Software Developer interview process.

GitLab Work Experiences