17 Thomson Reuters Software Engineer Interview Questions + Guide in 2025

Reuters is known as a news organization, but today, it is involved in legal compliance and other fields that need niche software engineering. As a result, Thomson Reuters software engineer interview questions can prove challenging even for seasoned experts in the field.

Software engineers at Reuters must have a high degree of technical expertise. It’s important to practice the types of questions asked in their interviews beforehand to understand what is regularly tested and how to answer the interviewers’ questions convincingly.

In this guide, we have compiled 17 Thomson Reuters software engineer interview questions to give you an idea of what to expect. We also take you through the specifics of the role at this company, the interview process used to bring in new tech staff, and more.

Overview

Software engineering roles at Reuters are often tied to specific services and countries. The teams you could join include legal, risk management, tax and accounting, government solutions, and news and media. The regions you could work in include North America, Europe, and Asia.

Typical responsibilities of software engineers at Thomson Reuters include:

• Contributing to the development and deployment of AI models
• Designing, building, and maintaining web applications
• Creation of user interfaces using tools such as Next.js
• Designing and deploying cloud-based solutions
• Providing thought leadership in the development of new software solutions
• Development of APIs
• Development of LLM-powered solutions, etc.

Reuters employs a hybrid work model. Depending on the specific role, you could spend 2 or 3 days in the office and the rest of the week working from home.

Thomson Reuters Software Engineer Salary Expectations

Software engineers at Thomson Reuters earn an average base salary of $102,875. This puts them in the top 39% of companies for this role. The base salary for a software engineer at Reuters starts at around $79,000 but can go as high as $135,000 for senior-level engineers.

Candidate Requirements

Many Thomson Reuters software engineer positions are both specialized and localized. This often results in candidate requirements that are not typical for this role in other companies. The general requirements often include:

• At least one year of experience in software engineering
• Proficiency in Python or another programming language
• Solid understanding of the software development lifecycle
• Demonstrable ability to solve complex technical problems
• Experience working with version control systems, e.g., Git.

For many positions, a bachelor’s degree is preferred but not required.

The less common requirements you may encounter when applying for a software engineering job at Reuters include:

• Proficiency in writing and speaking a specific language besides English, e.g., German, Portuguese, Japanese, etc.
• Experience interacting with large-language models (LLMs) using code
• Legal domain expertise (to work with the CoCounsel team)
• Experience working with specific coding languages and software tools/solutions, e.g., C++, Docker, SQL databases, Azure DevOps, snowflake, etc.

These uncommon requirements mean that you may only qualify for a few roles at Thomson Reuters. It’s a good idea to identify and focus on those that align best with your skills and experience.

Although the requirements to qualify for a software engineering position at Reuters can be daunting, the interview process itself is relatively straightforward. The actual number of interviews may vary, but you can expect the following steps when you start the process.

• Recruiter Call: Many successful candidates for Thomson Reuters software engineer roles are contacted directly by recruiters. However, others also apply through the company’s career page. During the recruiter call, candidates are questioned about their responsibilities in past jobs, financial expectations, and how their experiences align with the position.
• Online Assessment Via HackerRank: If you pass the initial screening call, you’ll then have to take a HackerRank challenge. Many questions on the test are on algorithms and data structures and can be considered challenging.
• Technical Interview: At Reuters, the technical round may involve one or multiple interviews. Additionally, some candidates have had a panel interview or have been questioned one-on-one. You will be asked to solve one or more technical problems based on the role. Some problems may be from HackerRank. You should also be prepared to do live coding in at least one technical interview.
• Cultural Interview: This interview will test how you respond to different scenarios at work and whether you’ll be a good fit for the culture at Reuters.
• Manager Round: The questions asked in this interview are similar to those in the initial recruiter call. They are based on your resume and will assess the work you’ve done in the past, how your experience aligns with the role, and your financial expectations. Candidates who pass this round can expect an offer.

The software engineers hired at Reuters tend to be experienced and highly skilled or specialized. Depending on factors such as location and the team, certain things could play to your advantage in an interview. These include:

• Spoken Language Proficiency: Reuters operates in many countries and often needs individuals who can communicate fluently with internal teams and external stakeholders. This means that being able to speak another language in addition to English can be a big advantage.
• Familiarity with Large Language Models: Reuters is designing many of its services around LLMs. As a software engineer, having a demonstrable ability to harness the power of LLMs through code will be key in some teams.
• Domain Expertise: Some software engineer roles also require or can benefit from domain expertise. One example is their software engineer, legal prompter role, which requires expertise in the legal domain.

Many past candidates found the technical Thomson Reuters software engineer interview questions especially challenging. Four key areas you should prepare for are algorithms, SQL, Python, and machine learning. We have compiled 17 questions on these crucial topics.

Algorithms

1. Given a 4 by 4 grid with a mouse trapped in one of the cells, how can you figure out which cell the mouse is trapped in with the fewest number of scans?

This question is designed to test your understanding of search algorithms and optimization. While checking each cell is an option, it’s not a solution that scales well. A binary search algorithm may be better suited for this. Dive deeper into this problem on Interview Query.

2. Write a function to return whether a string A can be shifted some places to get another string B.

Coding the solution to this problem can be simple if you can figure out the underlying algorithm. This question is an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to come up with creative algorithms.

3. You’ve been given a certain amount of money in dollars and a list of denominations. Write a function that returns the optimal change. The output should be a list of tuples, with each tuple representing a denomination and the amount of that denomination in the change.

This is considered an NP-hard problem and can be asked to test how you’d handle a problem with an algorithm that is difficult or perhaps impossible to optimize.

4. Write a function that will find the shortest path from a given start node to an end node, considering the nodes are each a cell in the same 2D array representing a graph. You can use any shortest-path algorithm.

For this question, Dijkstra’s algorithm is a good option for finding the shortest path. Check out how this solution can be implemented in Python on Interview Query.

5. Write a function that takes a set s and returns a Boolean value that determines whether all the elements in the set are ugly powers. An ugly power, $h^k$ is a Hamming number, h, or ugly number that has been multiplied by an arbitrary positive integer k.

*Note:* Your solution should be *O*(*n log*(*n*))

This question tests your ability to come up with efficient algorithms. Although it’s possible to solve the problem by iterating through a list of ugly numbers, taking advantage of ugly numbers’ unique properties would result in a more efficient algorithm.

SQL

6. Given an employee table and a department table, write a query to select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department. The query should be able to select the next highest salary in case multiple individuals share the number 1 spot.

This question tests your ability to write queries to extract specific information from multiple tables. You’ll need to use many standard SQL functions plus a JOIN to solve it.

7. You’ve been given a table of user work experiences. Write a query that calculates the percentage of users who were data analysts immediately before becoming data scientists.

This question tests your ability to break an SQL problem down into simple steps and write the subqueries to solve each step. Check out the solution on Interview Query.

8. Write a query that will return only the duplicate rows from a given table.

This question tests your knowledge of window functions in SQL. You’ll also need to figure out how to identify a row that has been duplicated.

9. You have been given a user sessions table and an attribution table from an e-commerce company. Write a query to calculate each converted user’s first touch attribution. A converted user is one who makes a purchase during a particular session.

This question is challenging because not every user is converted, and when one is converted, we can only attribute the right channel by identifying the user’s first session visit. Check out a full breakdown of the problem and the solution in the link.

10. Given a table of transactions that took place in 2023, write a query that sums the expenditure of each of the four departments provided, grouped by fiscal quarters.

This question will test your skills for working with conditional statements, aggregate functions, and other statements in SQL. You’ll need to extract the transactions for each quarter before summing up transactions associated with the different departments.

Python

11. Write a function that can simulate the random sampling of balls from a jar. The different ball colors should be stored in a list called jar, and the number of balls corresponding to each color should be in a list called n_balls at the same index as the color in the jar list.

At a Thomson Reuters interview, this question can be asked as a simple test of your problem-solving skills and your familiarity with lists, loops, and methods in Python.

12. Without using the built-in max function, write a function that returns the largest number from a list of integers or None if the list is empty.

This question tests your knowledge of iterating over a list and your ability to use comparison operators in Python.

13. Write a function that takes in an integer and outputs its value in words.

Python has many modules that are made for niche applications. In this case, the num2words module can help you convert integers to their word form. This can be useful in a role where such information must be extracted from data.

14. You’ve been given a list, grades, containing tuples. Each tuple is a name and a grade. Write a function to normalize the grades to a linear scale ranging from 0 to 1.

This question tests your problem-solving skills. To solve it, you need to iterate through the list and calculate the new value of each grade. However, you first need to identify the highest and the lowest grade in the list.

Machine Learning

15. You have been asked to build a decision tree model to predict whether a borrower will pay back a loan. How can you evaluate whether using a decision tree is the right call? In case you do move forward with the decision tree model, how would you evaluate its performance before and after deployment?

In machine learning, successful prediction often hinges on choosing the right model. This question tests your knowledge of decision tree models. Check out the video solution for this question on IQ.

16. You’ve been asked to build a model that uses a neural network to solve a problem. How would you justify the complexity of this solution to non-technical stakeholders?

This question tests both your understanding of the benefits of neural networks plus your ability to communicate technical information to non-technical audiences. The latter is key for some senior Thomson Reuters software engineer positions.

17. You are designing a 3rd party e-commerce site and want to ensure that no firearms are sold through it. How would you create a system to automatically detect listings that are selling guns?

This question tests your ability to define the scope of a project, apply machine learning to a business goal, and design a working ML system from the ground up. Follow the link to the video solution plus the transcript on Interview Query.

Thomson Reuters is known as a news provider but also offers other services to organizations. It is even developing AI-driven tools to enhance its offerings. As a result, the company is now a popular destination for software engineers worldwide. However, Reuters engineers are a different bunch, with subject matter expertise in specific fields and/or fluency in multiple languages. As a result, Thomson Reuters software engineer interview questions can set a high bar that can only be cleared by highly skilled candidates.

Interview Query provides access to many resources to help you handle Thomson Reuters’ challenging interview questions. Our question bank contains many practice interview problems, covering both technical and behavioral questions. You can also check out our Thomson Reuters company interview guide for a deeper look into the company’s recruitment process. Our AI interviewer and mock interview feature make it simpler to practice for an upcoming interview, and you can also compare salaries for software engineers at Reuters to those in other companies.

Landing a software engineer role at Reuters may not be easy, but we hope this guide will make it a lot less challenging for you.