Interview
Questions

Stripe is famous for its "Bug Bash" debugging interview. Tell me about the most challenging bug you have ever debugged. Walk me through your systematic approach to finding and fixing it.

Stripe has a strong written culture - decisions are often documented in detail. Tell me about a technical decision you documented and communicated to your team. How did you structure your reasoning?

Stripe's API is renowned for its developer experience. Have you designed APIs that other developers use? How do you balance ease of use, flexibility, and backwards compatibility?

Stripe thinks in decades, not quarters. Describe a time when you made a technical decision that optimized for the long term, even if it was harder in the short term.

Stripe values craft and attention to detail. Tell me about a time you went above and beyond to polish a feature or piece of code beyond the minimum requirements. What drove you?

Stripe handles billions of dollars in transactions. How do you ensure correctness and reliability in critical systems? Tell me about a time you designed for fault tolerance.

When debugging an issue in a system you are unfamiliar with, how do you approach building a mental model? Walk me through your process for investigating unfamiliar code.

Stripe builds for developers. Tell me about a time you built something with deep empathy for the end user. How did you understand their needs and incorporate their feedback?

Describe a time you worked with a team whose goals or priorities seemed to conflict with yours. How did you find common ground and move forward together?

Stripe's infrastructure must scale gracefully during high-traffic events like Black Friday. Tell me about a time you designed or optimized a system for variable or peak load.

Stripe hires for intellectual curiosity. What's a technical topic outside your immediate work that you've explored deeply? What drew you to it?

Stripe's mission is to "increase the GDP of the internet." Why does this mission resonate with you? How do you see yourself contributing to it?

Tell me about a time you identified a problem that nobody had assigned to you and took ownership of fixing it. What made you step up?

Describe a situation where you had to make a difficult technical trade-off. What were the options, how did you evaluate them, and how did you communicate your decision?

Stripe handles sensitive financial data. Tell me about a time you proactively identified or addressed a security concern in your code or system design.