I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at CarGurus (Cambridge, MA) in May 2023
Interview
- Initial phone screen with recruiter, about 30 minutes - Zoom / online coding challenge / technical questions interview, about an hour (we went over) Challenge consisted of: - A number of SQL problems with a given schema. These were quite easy - A question about site availability and how to diagnose when a page is not loading / very slow - A really fun and challenging coding problem. (Leetcode has an almost identical problem but with one aspect that makes it considerably easier. That problem is marked as "medium", and it has similarities to one marked as "hard" on leetcode The recruiter contacted me the next day to let me know I didn't get the job, but she offered to give me detailed feedback from the technical challenge interview if I had time. We did have a short phone call about it, and gave me the engineer's assessment, some of which was a bit surprising, but getting a realistic sense of someone's skills under the pressure of an interview is very difficult to do. The recruiter also passed along helpful suggestions on I could do better the next time. They also left the door open and said that I should contact them later down the road if another job opening pops up there. I think Cargurus is a class act with this process even though I did not get the job.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you diagnose a web page becoming very slow
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at CarGurus (Boston, MA) in Jan 2026
Interview
Internal recruiter screener, then a live coding interview on CodePen with a software engineer, then an on-site with three 1:1 interviews: two with software engineers that were a combination of behavioral and system design, then one with the hiring manager that was strictly behavioral. The next day, there were two more remote interviews with two more software engineers: one was strictly behavioral, and the other was a combination of behavioral and another live coding challenge on CodePen. I'm told that the on-site would normally be at the end of the process but it didn't work out that way for me due to scheduling conflicts.
Interview questions [7]
Question 1
Coding challenge: LRU cache implementation in Go via CodePen
Coding challenge: Metrics ingesting program via CodePen. JSON objects are streamed in, which include a metric name, source, and value. Implement a method that can give you the average of all the metrics of a given name and source.
Hiring manager asked some questions that are so cliche I wasn't expecting them: Where do you see yourself in 5 years, what are the top three things you're looking for in your next role, and what team qualities are important to you.
