I recently interviewed with Roku for a Senior Engineering position with their Mobile Backend team. Here's my review of their interview process.

To get the interview, I reached out to a Roku Recruiter from my LinkedIn contacts list, and they responded promptly with an initial discussion covering the company, my experience, and how it matched the open roles.

This was soon followed by a technical phone screen with the hiring manager. The phone screen included an algorithm question, followed by some design questions, a discussion of my experience, and more specifics about the team and the role.

I received the results of the phone screen very soon after and was invited for an onsite interview at the beautiful Roku campus in Los Gatos.

The onsite consisted of 5 technical rounds and 1 non-technical round with HR. The technical rounds were a mix of programming, debugging, and system design questions. All the questions were very reasonable, clearly explained, and within the scope of what you would expect as a Software Engineer. The focus was on sound coding principles, design principles, and the appropriate use of data structures, rather than tricky gotchas. The interviewers were very courteous, knowledgeable, and patient in answering any questions I had about the team and the role.

I heard about the results of the interview the same evening. The recruiter was very mindful of other deadlines I had. The recruiter also clearly outlined their offer details and provided significant insight into the company culture, team expectations, and more.

Overall, from the initial contact to the final results, the process with Roku was outstanding. In terms of prompt communication, professionalism in treating their candidates, and fairness in compensation, Roku is a model that other companies in the valley should strive to emulate.

Algorithms, System Design questions