I applied online. I interviewed at Speechify (Dublin, Dublin) in Jul 2026
Interview
Applied online through linkedin, instantly got an email about a technical interview that needed to be scheduled.
The initial technical interview is a screening interview where you are required to share your screen and use your webcam. There is nobody in the interview with you.
I was given 90 minutes to clone a repo, setup the local environment and then read through the task list of 5 tasks. The tasks themselves are essentially what you would be assigned as a ticket to fix bugs and optimize. However for someone who wants to figure out the codebase first before tackling tasks, having a 90 minute countdown is not helpful. They are essentially having you do the job of a developer but from day 1 with zero onboarding.
They did allow AI usage but I am not here to be tested on my prompting ability, so I left after 30 minutes and did not complete the assessment
Personally, its possible that this role was out of my capabilities, or it was just not meant for people who prefer to fully understand a codebase before making changes without relying on AI
Other Software Engineer interview reviews for Speechify
The interview process started with an online assessment. It was a hands-on technical test focused on auditing an existing full-stack codebase. After that, there was supposed to be a technical interview with one of their engineers, followed by a final round with the CEO. The process felt structured and focused on practical coding and problem-solving skills rather than just theoretical questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you audit this existing codebase, identify root causes of the issues spanning performance, security, and tooling, and implement surgical fixes without breaking any existing functionality?
The 1st round is online assessment. You book a 90 minutes time slot, and do AI-assisted coding without interviewer. During the assessment, you are given access to a Github project containing a fullstack NodeJS project for a social media platform, including web frontend, api server, unit test, functional test. And you should find issues in the project, and submit fixes. Any AI tools are allowed.
You don't have time to look over the whole project, so you must use AI. It uses Protobuf and Playwright, so make sure your environment is prepared for that. Playwright is big in size, and Protobuf doesn't support all platforms.