Flexshopper is a dynamic financial technology company that enables consumers to acquire durable goods through innovative lease-to-own solutions within its e-commerce platform.
The Software Engineer role at Flexshopper is pivotal for developing high-quality RESTful microservice APIs that support the company's e-commerce operations. Key responsibilities include collaborating with cross-functional teams throughout the software development lifecycle, from requirements gathering to design, development, and deployment. An ideal candidate will possess extensive experience in modern JavaScript (ES2015+) and the MERN/MEAN stack, alongside a strong understanding of algorithms and data structures. Success in this role also hinges on a solid grasp of software development best practices, microservices architecture, and application security principles. Candidates who are creative problem solvers and team players will thrive in Flexshopper's fast-paced, inclusive environment that emphasizes collaboration and innovation.
This guide will equip you with tailored insights and strategies to excel in your interview for the Software Engineer position at Flexshopper, ensuring you are well-prepared to showcase your skills and fit for the company culture.
The interview process for a Software Engineer at FlexShopper is designed to assess both technical skills and cultural fit within the company. Candidates can expect a structured approach that includes multiple rounds of interviews, focusing on various aspects of software engineering and collaboration.
The first step in the interview process is typically a 30- to 45-minute phone interview with a recruiter. This conversation will cover your background, experience, and motivation for applying to FlexShopper. The recruiter will also provide insights into the company culture and the specifics of the Software Engineer role. This is an opportunity for you to express your interest in the position and ask any preliminary questions you may have.
Following the initial screen, candidates will undergo a technical assessment, which may be conducted via a coding platform or through a live coding session. This assessment will focus on your proficiency in modern JavaScript (ES2015+), RESTful API development, and your understanding of microservices architecture. Expect to solve algorithmic problems and demonstrate your coding skills, particularly in the context of building and deploying enterprise applications.
Candidates who pass the technical assessment will be invited to participate in one or more technical interviews. These interviews will be conducted by senior engineers and will delve deeper into your technical expertise. You will be asked to discuss your experience with the MERN/MEAN stack, event-driven programming, and application security best practices. Additionally, you may be presented with real-world scenarios to assess your problem-solving abilities and your approach to software design and architecture.
In parallel with the technical interviews, candidates will also participate in a behavioral interview. This round focuses on assessing your soft skills, teamwork, and alignment with FlexShopper's values. Expect questions that explore your past experiences in collaborative environments, how you handle challenges, and your approach to maintaining high standards of software quality.
The final stage of the interview process may involve a meeting with senior management or team leads. This interview is an opportunity for you to discuss your long-term career goals and how they align with FlexShopper's mission. It also allows the company to evaluate your fit within the broader team and organizational culture.
As you prepare for your interviews, it's essential to be ready for a variety of questions that will test both your technical knowledge and your ability to work effectively in a team-oriented environment.
Here are some tips to help you excel in your interview.
Given the role's focus on building high-quality RESTful microservice APIs, be prepared to discuss your experience with modern JavaScript (ES2015+), the MERN/MEAN stack, and your proficiency in developing and deploying enterprise RESTful service APIs. Highlight specific projects where you successfully implemented these technologies, and be ready to explain your thought process and the challenges you faced.
FlexShopper values engineers who can tackle complex application and technical problems. Prepare to share examples of how you've identified and resolved issues in past projects. Use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method to structure your responses, ensuring you clearly articulate the problem, your approach, and the outcome.
FlexShopper promotes a collaborative and inclusive work environment. Familiarize yourself with their values and be ready to discuss how you align with their mission of treating consumers fairly and fostering a balanced work-life experience. Share examples of how you've contributed to team dynamics in previous roles, emphasizing your ability to work well with diverse groups.
Expect questions that assess your teamwork, adaptability, and communication skills. FlexShopper looks for self-starters who can thrive in a fast-paced environment. Reflect on past experiences where you demonstrated these qualities, particularly in collaborative settings or under tight deadlines.
The role requires a solid understanding of software development best practices, including YAGNI (You Aren't Gonna Need It) and principles of microservices architecture. Be prepared to discuss how you apply these principles in your work and how they contribute to building scalable and maintainable systems.
FlexShopper employs Agile development methodologies, so be ready to discuss your experience with Scrum or similar frameworks. Highlight your role in Agile teams, how you contributed to sprint planning, and any tools you used for project management.
Understanding application security best practices is crucial for this role. Be prepared to discuss how you ensure security in your code and any specific measures you've implemented in past projects to protect against vulnerabilities.
Prepare thoughtful questions that demonstrate your interest in the role and the company. Inquire about the team dynamics, the technologies they are currently using, or how they measure success in their engineering practices. This not only shows your enthusiasm but also helps you gauge if FlexShopper is the right fit for you.
By following these tips and preparing thoroughly, you'll position yourself as a strong candidate for the Software Engineer role at FlexShopper. Good luck!
In this section, we’ll review the various interview questions that might be asked during a FlexShopper software engineering interview. The interview will focus on your technical skills, particularly in building RESTful APIs, understanding of JavaScript, and familiarity with microservices architecture. Be prepared to discuss your experience with various programming paradigms and your approach to problem-solving in a collaborative environment.
Understanding RESTful principles is crucial for this role, as you will be building APIs that are scalable and maintainable.
Discuss the key principles of REST, such as statelessness, resource-based URLs, and the use of standard HTTP methods. Highlight how these principles contribute to the scalability and performance of APIs.
“RESTful APIs should be stateless, meaning each request from a client must contain all the information needed to process it. This allows for better scalability. Additionally, using resource-based URLs and standard HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE helps in maintaining a clear and consistent API structure.”
Your familiarity with these stacks will be assessed, as they are essential for the development work at FlexShopper.
Share specific projects where you utilized the MERN or MEAN stack, detailing your role and the technologies you used.
“I worked on an eCommerce platform using the MERN stack, where I developed the backend with Node.js and Express, and the frontend with React. This experience taught me how to effectively manage state and handle asynchronous operations in a full-stack application.”
Security is a critical aspect of API development, especially in a FinTech environment.
Discuss common security practices such as authentication, authorization, input validation, and using HTTPS. Mention any specific tools or frameworks you have used.
“I implement security measures like OAuth for authentication and ensure that all data is validated and sanitized to prevent injection attacks. Additionally, I always use HTTPS to encrypt data in transit, which is crucial for protecting sensitive information.”
Your problem-solving skills will be evaluated through this question.
Explain your systematic approach to identifying and resolving issues, including tools and techniques you use.
“I start by reproducing the issue and then use logging to gather more information about the state of the application. I often utilize tools like New Relic for performance monitoring and debugging, which helps me pinpoint bottlenecks or errors in the code.”
Understanding microservices is essential for the role, as you will be working with this architecture.
Define microservices and discuss their advantages over monolithic architectures, such as scalability and maintainability.
“Microservices architecture involves breaking down an application into smaller, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. This approach enhances flexibility and allows teams to work on different services simultaneously without affecting the entire application.”
Testing is a vital part of software development, and your approach will be scrutinized.
Discuss your testing strategy, including the frameworks you use and the types of tests you prioritize.
“I follow a test-driven development approach where I write unit tests before implementing the functionality. I use Jest for testing my JavaScript code, ensuring that each function behaves as expected. This practice helps catch bugs early in the development process.”
This question assesses your problem-solving and algorithmic skills.
Provide a specific example of a problem, the algorithm you used, and the outcome.
“I once had to optimize a search function for a large dataset. I implemented a binary search algorithm, which reduced the time complexity from O(n) to O(log n). This significantly improved the performance of the application, especially under heavy load.”
Your understanding of data structures will be evaluated.
Discuss various data structures and their use cases, demonstrating your knowledge of when to use each.
“I prefer using hash tables for quick lookups and dictionaries, while I use trees for hierarchical data. For ordered data, I often choose arrays or linked lists, depending on the need for dynamic resizing or frequent insertions and deletions.”
This is relevant to the asynchronous nature of JavaScript and Node.js.
Define event-driven programming and discuss its benefits, particularly in web applications.
“Event-driven programming is a paradigm where the flow of the program is determined by events such as user actions or messages from other programs. This approach is particularly beneficial in web applications, as it allows for non-blocking operations, improving responsiveness and performance.”
Version control is essential for collaborative development.
Discuss your experience with Git, including branching strategies and collaboration practices.
“I use Git for version control and follow a branching strategy where I create feature branches for new developments. I regularly merge changes back to the main branch and use pull requests to facilitate code reviews, ensuring code quality and collaboration among team members.”
What are the Z and t-tests, and when should you use each? Explain the purpose and differences between Z and t-tests. Describe scenarios where one test is preferred over the other.
What are the drawbacks of the given student test score data layouts, and how would you reformat them? Analyze the provided student test score datasets for potential issues. Suggest formatting changes to make the data more useful for analysis. Discuss common problems in "messy" datasets.
What metrics would you use to determine the value of each marketing channel? Given data on marketing channels and their costs, identify key metrics to evaluate the value of each channel.
How would you determine the next partner card for a company using customer spending data? Using customer spending data, outline a method to identify the best potential partner for a new credit card offering.
How would you investigate if the redesigned email campaign led to an increase in conversion rates? Given a scenario where conversion rates increased after a new email campaign, describe how you would determine if the increase was due to the campaign or other factors.
Write a function search_list
to check if a target value is in a linked list.
Write a function, search_list
, that returns a boolean indicating if the target
value is in the linked_list
or not. You receive the head of the linked list, which is a dictionary with value
and next
keys. If the linked list is empty, you'll receive None
.
Write a query to find users who placed less than 3 orders or ordered less than $500 worth of product.
Write a query to identify the names of users who placed less than 3 orders or ordered less than $500 worth of product. Use the transactions
, users
, and products
tables.
Create a function digit_accumulator
to sum every digit in a string representing a floating-point number.
You are given a string
that represents some floating-point number. Write a function, digit_accumulator
, that returns the sum of every digit in the string
.
Develop a function to parse the most frequent words used in poems.
You're hired by a literary newspaper to parse the most frequent words used in poems. Poems are given as a list of strings called sentences
. Return a dictionary of the frequency that words are used in the poem, processed as lowercase.
Write a function rectangle_overlap
to determine if two rectangles overlap.
You are given two rectangles a
and b
each defined by four ordered pairs denoting their corners on the x
, y
plane. Write a function rectangle_overlap
to determine whether or not they overlap. Return True
if so, and False
otherwise.
How would you design a function to detect anomalies in univariate and bivariate datasets? If given a univariate dataset, how would you design a function to detect anomalies? What if the data is bivariate?
What are the drawbacks of the given student test score datasets, and how would you reformat them? Assume you have data on student test scores in two layouts. What are the drawbacks of these layouts? What formatting changes would you make for better analysis? Describe common problems in "messy" datasets.
What is the expected churn rate in March for customers who bought subscriptions since January 1st? You noticed that 10% of customers who bought subscriptions in January 2020 canceled before February 1st. Assuming uniform new customer acquisition and a 20% month-over-month decrease in churn, what is the expected churn rate in March for all customers since January 1st?
How would you explain a p-value to a non-technical person? Explain what a p-value is in simple terms to someone who is not technical.
What are Z and t-tests, and when should you use each? Describe what Z and t-tests are, their uses, differences, and when to use one over the other.
How does random forest generate the forest and why use it over logistic regression? Explain how random forest creates multiple decision trees and aggregates their results. Discuss the advantages of using random forest over logistic regression, such as handling non-linear data and reducing overfitting.
When would you use a bagging algorithm versus a boosting algorithm? Compare the use cases for bagging and boosting algorithms. Provide examples of tradeoffs, such as bagging reducing variance and boosting reducing bias but being more prone to overfitting.
How would you evaluate and compare two credit risk models for personal loans?
List metrics to track the success of the new model, such as accuracy, precision, recall, and AUC-ROC.
What’s the difference between Lasso and Ridge Regression? Explain the differences between Lasso and Ridge Regression, focusing on their regularization techniques and how they handle feature selection and multicollinearity.
What are the key differences between classification models and regression models? Outline the main differences between classification and regression models, including their objectives, output types, and common use cases.
FlexShopper believes in treating consumers fairly and with respect. Our diverse, inclusive team enjoys a balanced work-life experience, collaborating in a fun, fast-paced onsite environment in sunny Boca Raton, Florida.
The Senior Software Engineer will build high-quality RESTful microservice APIs, work on complex technical problems, collaborate on design and deployment, and maintain software quality through best practices.
We seek candidates with 7+ years of modern JavaScript, 4+ years of MERN/MEAN Stack, 5+ years of enterprise RESTful service APIs, and proficiency with various frameworks and tools. A Bachelor's Degree in computer science and experience in eCommerce or FinTech are preferred.
FlexShopper offers competitive compensation, health insurance, 401k with employer match, paid time off, disability/life insurance, commuter passes, a casual dress code, free snacks, and gym memberships, among other perks.
Prepare by reviewing common interview questions, brushing up on your technical skills, and familiarizing yourself with FlexShopper’s products and services. Practice with Interview Query can also help you ace your interview.
If you're intrigued by the opportunity to join a dynamic and diverse team in a fast-paced, innovative FinTech environment, FlexShopper could be the perfect fit for you. To streamline your preparation and boost your chances for success, visit our comprehensive FlexShopper Interview Guide on Interview Query. It’s packed with insights and practice questions tailored to help you navigate the interview process confidently. In addition to our extensive company guides, we offer specialized resources for various roles, ensuring you're well-prepared for any challenge. Empower yourself with Interview Query and elevate your interview game. For any further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Good luck with your interview!