Transferwise
Behavioral Questions
Tell me about yourself
I'm currently working as an iOS developer at MyDoc, a start-up company that is trying to simplify healthcare in Singapore. I have been working here for almost two years now. My main responsibility in this position is to develop and maintain two iOS apps. One pro app for healthcare professionals to manage their consultations and connect with other professionals, and one app for patient to access the healthcare network.
Before MyDoc, I worked at Hong Wei Global as a software engineer. I've been working there for one and half years. In this position, my responsibility is to build AI systems using game engine, like Unreal Engine. I design and implement multiple AI using behavior tree, steering behaviors and path finding algorithms.
In my spare time, I worked on a few games with my friends. The biggest game we build is called Scrap Convoy. It is a four player co-op game. We spent roughly about half year on this project. We were trying to recreate the experience where friends can sit and play together. In this project, I'm responsible for building all of the AI systems, some gameplay mechanisms and puzzles.
Why this company?
- Things you like about their product
I've personally used transferwise one time several years ago. I was trying to send money to Malaysia and it was quite expensive to transfer the money through bank at that momen. I had great experience with the product and get to save lots of money compared to bank transfer.
- Acknowledge the Company’s Uniqueness, focus on the company's culture and mission.
I also think that money without boarder really matters. The world is becoming more global. More and more people are deciding where to live, where to study, and where to word. Transferwise will be a natrual choice for this trend.
- Enhance the product
I also know that your current project is moving away from MVC to a clean architecture, that's something I'd love to work on, I have experience with MVVM architecture and did some experiment witht the clean Swift architecture.
Why do you want to leave your current/last company?
During my two years at MyDoc, I had the opportunity to really develop a strong skill in problem solving, mobile development. I loved the people I worked with and the projects I worked on, but at some point I realized I wasn’t being challenged the way I used to be. I don't want to let myself get too comfortable, so I decided to pursue a position where I can continue to grow.
What are you looking for in your next role?
Learning opportunity and growth I've been developing mobile apps for years now, and I'm looking for a position where I could continue to improve my skills and learn new things.
Explain your motivation Another thing that's really important to me is the chance to impact people's lives and make a big difference through my work. I’m always motivated by being able to see the impact of my work on other people.
Connect With Your Long-Term Goals I want to take bigger responsibility, and be able to learn more about project management.
Job Description
- Mobile payment system, card and back transfer
- Minimum viable product and conversion rates
Our app is currently written in a mix of Objective-C and Swift, with all new code written in Swift and moving away from the traditional MVC architecture to a more clean architecture which will enable us to increase the testability of our code and help us maintain the excellent stability that our app enjoys.
Broad understanding of the concept of minimum viable product and conversion rates
Company Info
TransferWise was founded in 2011 with a clear mission: Money without borders - so people and businesses can send and receive any currency effortlessly, whenever, wherever.
Sure, the heart of what we do is international money transfer. And we’re committed to making it instant, convenient and fair for millions of people, all over the world. But we’re growing our other products and our teams at an exciting pace. And we’re looking for the very best to jump on board.
How does it work?
TransferWise, you send money to our account in your country and tell us who you're sending it to. Then we send the converted amount to your recipient from our account in their country. The money never actually crosses any borders, which means we can charge the smallest possible fee to convert your money and ensure it arrives safely.
In 2017 we launched the TransferWise borderless account. A multi-currency account to hold and convert 40+ currencies, get paid from countries around the world and spend money on a debit card with the real exchange rate.
Technical Interview
- Live coding tasks.
- HackerRank challenge, which contains around 25 questions, from which 3 were coding exercises.
- I was asked to share some of my previous challenging project and how I solved it.
- Write an API for a phonebook service where the answer time (search name by the phone number) does not depend on the size of the phonebook.
Product Interview
- Interview with product manager and designer.
- Questions about motivation, building apps through users view, UI/UX questions.
- The purpose of this round is to evaluate whether I’m capable of designing any product.
- How I relate big picture into my day to day role and tasks.
- Tell me about a great product that you love
- Which new features would you introduce at our product?
- What would you improve at our product?
Interview with Engineering VP and Business Team lead
- Questions about motivation and analyzing previous project and experience.
- He mainly discussed my motivation, like why I want to join TransferWise.
- We also discussed few basic technical fundamental topics.
- Fintech problems
Misc
- A big part of a Transferwise interview is the culture fit, so highly recommend reading all about the mission and vision.
- What brought you to apply for TransferWise?
Design Questions
Design an elevator The PM focused a lot on how tech affects business, asked me about metrics, KPIs, we talked about a potential project (e.g. how would I improve TransferWise) and it was pretty awesome in the end!
They also try to check how much you know about TrasnferWise. 4/ Product interview with product manager and designer. Questions about motivation, building apps through users view, UI/UX questions.
Product Feedback
- Do you have a data persistent layer?
- How is the data stored on device?
- Do you use any cache system?
- How do you increase the security level?
- What kind of the architecture ?
- Are you using swift or objective-c in the project?
- Do you guys do UI in code or storyboard?
- How much time do you spend on testing?
Questions to ask
- What are you guys currently working on ?
- What's your biggest challenge working on the product?
- How the progress of moving away from the MVC architecture.