Monzo

Backend Engineer Interview Experience - London, United Kingdom

July 24, 2018

Positive ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I applied online. The process took four weeks.

The process consists of the following stages:

The first stage is a chat with one of their engineering managers.
The second stage is a take-home exercise.
The third stage is a chat and review over the exercise. They really care about your decisions here.
The last stage is on-site, and it's composed of a general tech and system design interview. I went through the general tech remotely, since I don't live in London, and then went through to the design interview and another engineering manager chat on-site. As I understand, usually they conduct the last three interviews on-site. I didn't pass the system design interview. I think it went OK by my end, and I did leave the interview with a good feeling overall, but later I was told I didn't pass due to a lack of system design experience. I guess they keep a pretty high standard, which is a good thing. Overall, I had a good experience. The interviewers were very nice and professional the whole way. I really enjoyed the system design interview.

Questions

How does some technical stuff work? There were three answers.

Was this helpful?

Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 14 interview experiences for the Monzo Backend Engineer role in London, England.

Success Rate

43%

Pass Rate

Monzo's interview process for their Backend Engineer roles in London, England is fairly selective, failing a large portion of engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive57%

Neutral7%

Negative36%

Candidates reported having good feelings for Monzo's Backend Engineer interview process in London, England.

Monzo Work Experiences

Great company to work for! The impression/culture you get from the outside is what you get inside

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

London, England

October 17, 2022

Pros: Transparent company culture Everyone is genuinely a pleasure to work with Lot's of autonomy within the role

Cons: Heavy workload Having lots of autonomy won't suit everyone

Great company to work for! The impression/culture you get from the outside is what you get inside

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

London, England

October 17, 2022

Pros: Transparent company culture Everyone is genuinely a pleasure to work with Lot's of autonomy within the role

Cons: Heavy workload Having lots of autonomy won't suit everyone

Great culture and flexibility

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: Great culture and great people Flexible working Option to work remotely which is hard to find with London based companies

Cons: The environment is getting slightly more corporate as the bank becomes more established.

Great culture and flexibility

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: Great culture and great people Flexible working Option to work remotely which is hard to find with London based companies

Cons: The environment is getting slightly more corporate as the bank becomes more established.

A good place to work, but I feels like a conveyor line worker

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

London, England

October 21, 2022

Pros: Good salary Learning budget (I used it for local conference tickets and eng books) Motivated colleagues Engineering tools are kept up-to-date Business is doing well and on a sure track to achieve profitability next year Working on a known and loved product makes me feel good

Cons: Work in product squads is mostly copy-paste from existing things, with a few variations. The eng platform is very opinionated (and limited to a set of tools - only Golang as a language, only Cassandra - AWS Key Spaces as DB). It contributes to the feeling of being a conveyor line worker at the engineering features factory. The work is fast-paced and there is a lot of it. I never work on weekends and really late into the evening. At the same time, every day is intense and every evening I am very tired. By the end of the week, I am usually exhausted.

A good place to work, but I feels like a conveyor line worker

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

London, England

October 21, 2022

Pros: Good salary Learning budget (I used it for local conference tickets and eng books) Motivated colleagues Engineering tools are kept up-to-date Business is doing well and on a sure track to achieve profitability next year Working on a known and loved product makes me feel good

Cons: Work in product squads is mostly copy-paste from existing things, with a few variations. The eng platform is very opinionated (and limited to a set of tools - only Golang as a language, only Cassandra - AWS Key Spaces as DB). It contributes to the feeling of being a conveyor line worker at the engineering features factory. The work is fast-paced and there is a lot of it. I never work on weekends and really late into the evening. At the same time, every day is intense and every evening I am very tired. By the end of the week, I am usually exhausted.

Great company to work for! The impression/culture you get from the outside is what you get inside

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

London, England

October 17, 2022

Pros: Transparent company culture Everyone is genuinely a pleasure to work with Lot's of autonomy within the role

Cons: Heavy workload Having lots of autonomy won't suit everyone

5.0
Great company to work for! The impression/culture you get from the outside is what you get inside
Backend Engineer • Current Employee
London, England
October 17, 2022
Pros: Transparent company culture Everyone is genuinely a pleasure to work with Lot's of autonomy within the role
Cons: Heavy workload Having lots of autonomy won't suit everyone

Great culture and flexibility

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: Great culture and great people Flexible working Option to work remotely which is hard to find with London based companies

Cons: The environment is getting slightly more corporate as the bank becomes more established.

5.0
Great culture and flexibility
Backend Engineer • Current Employee
May 7, 2026
Pros: Great culture and great people Flexible working Option to work remotely which is hard to find with London based companies
Cons: The environment is getting slightly more corporate as the bank becomes more established.

A good place to work, but I feels like a conveyor line worker

Backend Engineer • Current Employee

London, England

October 21, 2022

Pros: Good salary Learning budget (I used it for local conference tickets and eng books) Motivated colleagues Engineering tools are kept up-to-date Business is doing well and on a sure track to achieve profitability next year Working on a known and loved product makes me feel good

Cons: Work in product squads is mostly copy-paste from existing things, with a few variations. The eng platform is very opinionated (and limited to a set of tools - only Golang as a language, only Cassandra - AWS Key Spaces as DB). It contributes to the feeling of being a conveyor line worker at the engineering features factory. The work is fast-paced and there is a lot of it. I never work on weekends and really late into the evening. At the same time, every day is intense and every evening I am very tired. By the end of the week, I am usually exhausted.

4.0
A good place to work, but I feels like a conveyor line worker
Backend Engineer • Current Employee
London, England
October 21, 2022
Pros: Good salary Learning budget (I used it for local conference tickets and eng books) Motivated colleagues Engineering tools are kept up-to-date Business is doing well and on a sure track to achieve profitability next year Working on a known and loved product makes me feel good
Cons: Work in product squads is mostly copy-paste from existing things, with a few variations. The eng platform is very opinionated (and limited to a set of tools - only Golang as a language, only Cassandra - AWS Key Spaces as DB). It contributes to the feeling of being a conveyor line worker at the engineering features factory. The work is fast-paced and there is a lot of it. I never work on weekends and really late into the evening. At the same time, every day is intense and every evening I am very tired. By the end of the week, I am usually exhausted.

Copyright © Taro