Engineering Interview Process

We're glad you're interested in how the interviewing process looks like at Silverfin! Each step of the process is described below so you can have a good idea about what awaits.

One part that not a lot of companies talk about is how you feel about working with us. We think it's at least as important as the other way around, so feel free to ask as many questions as you like about that until you're sufficiently confident that we would be a good fit for you. We could even set up a separate meeting if necessary, no problem at all.

If at any point you decide we might not be a good fit for you after all, don't worry about calling things off prematurely. We totally understand.

During any stage, if you have questions, don't hesitate to send us a mail! We'll try our best to answer it as quickly as possible: engineering-jobs@silverfin.com.

You can find our latest engineering jobs on the Silverfin career page.

Stage 1: Application Screening (30 min.)

First your application is screened by HR and our Engineering Director. At this stage we check some basics such as what timezone you're in and what your answers were to the application form questions. This will take at most a few days. Either way you'll receive feedback and if positive you'll get an invitation for a first 30 min. interview with Youp, Talent Partner. He will give you a first introduction to Silverfin and have a talk about your experience and interests.

Since we're remote-first, this interview is done online. Please have a good webcam at the ready, a working microphone, and be in a silent location with a good internet connection so we can have a problem-free videocall. Our video-conferencing tool of choice is Zoom, so make sure to have it installed and ready beforehand so we can start on time.

Stage 2: Interview #1 (1 hour)

If everything checked out in Stage 1, we'll invite you to a next interview. This interview is with a Senior Silverfin Engineer, and will last at most 1 hour. We start with introducing each other and we'll ask a bit about your background. We will ask a few technical questions, and also ask you to do a short live-coding exercise. Not to worry, we'll help guide you through it! At the end there will be some time for questions from you as well.

For the coding exercise, you will be able to use whatever tools you prefer. This includes your preferred IDE, terminal and browser. You can also do any google searches or Stackoverflow queries that you'd like. We're all engineers, we know how it is! Even the best of us need to Google what the syntax for a case/select was again, every once in a while.

We'll ask you to share your full screen when you're doing the exercise, so we can follow along with what you're googling and see how you approach solving the problem at hand. We suggest you prepare your desktop and environment for this in advance of the call, and turn on DnD mode, to respect your privacy.

After the interview, the interviewing engineer might discuss the call with another recruiting engineer, and make a decision about whether they think you're a good fit for us or not. This again should only take a few days. You will always hear back from us no matter what the outcome.

Stage 3: Interview #2 (1.5 hours)

If interview #1 went well, you'll be invited to have a second interview. This will be a chat with Raphael, Engineering Director, and will take a bit longer - 1.5 to 2 hours. The setup is the same - a Zoom call, but you won't have to share your screen at any point.

During this interview we'll go deeper into certain aspects. We might ask more advanced technical questions, or followup on certain areas of interest identified during the first interview. We will also ask about your soft skills. Since code review is a big part of our day jobs, we will ask you to do a code review of a piece of code we will supply. At the end as usual there will be some time for questions you may have.

Stage 4: Final Interview (1 hour)

Lastly there will be a final interview with David, Silverfin's VP Technology. This interview will be around 1 hour. Partly this will be about getting to know you, learn about your interests and who you are. It will also be a final confirmation of your technical knowledge. He will ask you to bring a piece of code that you can talk about and walk him through, while he'll ask you questions about it.

Stage 5: Final Decision

After the final interview with David, we would like to have a last reference check with two of your previous colleagues or managers. You decide yourself who we can contact, so please provide us with their contact details by then.

If after all this you feel like Silverfin would be a good fit, and we agree, then we can welcome you to the team. We have a full onboarding process worked out to get you up to speed in your new team as soon as possible.