Before May of 2025, Justworks engineering operated under three separate teams, each laddering up to a General Manager who was ultimately responsible for some total slice of the business. While there are upsides to this pattern (engineers being on the same team as Customer Support or Operations), the downside is that you end up with three distinct engineering teams each with their own growth framework, technology choices, organizational layout, and even cultures. In our case, it also means you end up with differences in things like hiring priorities, team habits and processes; all of which end up accelerating away from each other.
Or at least that’s what happened to us.
But then we changed things up.
Engineering is now a single team (blog post for another time). A lot of fun things get unlocked when you organize this way. Default decisions around technology choices enable teams to move a lot quicker through the early phases of projects because they can focus on the crux of the problem they are trying to solve rather than picking a technology.
Internal mobility is easier than ever because a Senior Engineer on the Worker’s Compensation pod will be just as effective and impactful as a Senior Engineer on the Core Models and Data Services pod. And for the purposes of this blog post, the most exciting thing we gained was being able to have a singular hiring experience no matter which team is looking for some new engineers.
And so with that preamble out of the way*, here’s what to expect and how to prepare for a Software Engineering interview at Justworks.
Your Resume
First things first, get your resume together and updated. There are infinite YouTube videos, business books, and Medium.com(opens in a new tab) articles written about how to write a good resume and most of them converge on a few key things. What we want you to highlight is what you worked on and why it mattered. Every company has its own definition of engineer leveling so don’t get too hung up trying to nail down when you were promoted from an SE 6.5 to an SE 6.7. Of course, we care what technologies were involved, but the primary thing we look for is:
Does this candidate know how to talk about their work beyond “I used Django” or “I made API routes”.
We look through all resumes with our human eyeballs and so we’ll see yours and what you did and why you thought it mattered. And if we want to hear more, we’ll move to the next round which is…
The Phone Screening
The initial recruiter phone screen. This is a basic phone call, usually no longer than 25 minutes where we spot check a few things, get some early ideas of communication style, and tell you more about Justworks and what’s going on here. We try to talk to people as quickly as possible, so we have all hands on deck doing these phone screens. You may talk to one of our incredible recruiters, an Engineering Manager, or even a Director. Regardless of who is on the phone with you, the questions are the same.
We want to know your timeline for when you’re looking to have a new job. We want to make sure you’re excited about spending a few days each week with your team in our very cool office in FiDi. And we also talk about another topic that has an infinite supply of advice content: “what are your salary expectations?” Mostly we just want to put a voice to the resume.
The At-Home Coding Test
After this, we send over our take-home coding test. Yes, we still care that you know how to code in the age of Agentic Codegen. The test isn’t leetcode style puzzles (I’m terrible at those and I’m a great programmer!) but instead a set of unit tests and an empty implementation that you need to fill in the methods for.
It takes about 1.5 hours and is progressive, so after you satisfy the first set of tests and requirements it will throw a curve ball at you. To be honest, I was prepared to veto this take-home test. Before making that call, I and the rest of the engineering leadership did it ourselves and were convinced of its value as a signal for our hiring loop (it also helps that it was actually fun and engaging). I strongly encourage you to do it all by hand. The tool we use has a light ability to check for things it perceives as “cheating” but even if it didn’t, I want you to go through this challenge with your own brain at the wheel.
The Leadership Video Call
Now its time to get into the details. In this round, you’ll spend 45 minutes talking to a hiring manager (either an Engineering Manager, Senior Engineering Manager, or even a Director). We’ll cover a few specific things about your career so far: a project or two that you’re particularly proud of; what you’re looking for out of your next job; how you prefer to work on teams. The point of this interview is to dig in on some of the stories that best describe the way you like to work. Be sure to think about stories that demonstrate both your technical decision making as well as your role on team projects. For our part, we’ll tell you more about Justworks and the teams that are currently looking for someone like you.
The Onsite Experience
Okay, so you’ve written your resume, we talked about compensation, and you did the take-home coding test, –now comes the onsite. This is a big ask and we want to make sure you have an enjoyable, human, and fun experience regardless of the outcome. We have a single interview loop for being a Justworks Engineer which gives you a chance to meet folks from all over our department rather than just the team that is currently hiring.
We want you to succeed and our interviewers don’t just cross their arms smugly while you scribble away at a whiteboard. All our interviews are constructed to be either highly conversational or extremely collaborative. You’ll pair with two engineers to find and fix a bug in a piece of software. You’ll design a set of APIs and database tables (and even some infra if you get to it) for a product. And you’ll talk to one of our Product Managers about work and planning and how to figure out what matters or not. All of that culminates in a final conversation with a Senior Manager or Director of Engineering where you can decompress and ask questions you have about teams and technology and roadmaps.
Whew!
From there, your work is done. At the end of the day of your onsite, everyone who interviewed you will convene and make a recommendation about your candidacy to the hiring committee. This means that we make a decision and let you know a day or two after your onsite. Speedy.
* The preamble felt important because if you search around the internet and find info that predates June 1 2025, it’s likely in reference to the thing we moved away from!
