Criteo Senior Software Engineer interview questions

I had my coding interview today for the Senior Software Engineer position at Criteo (Ann Arbor branch), and I just want to say—it was a great experience. The interview was conducted via the CoderPad platform. I was invited to a session with two very kind and professional senior engineers. The task involved reviewing a Java code snippet, identifying a couple of bugs, and implementing a missing method. The code was clean, readable, and not overly complex, which made it easy to dive into the logic. That said, I was a bit stressed going into it—this was my first time using CoderPad (I’m more used to working in IntelliJ), and the role itself means a lot to me. At the beginning, I had a bit of a mental block. But the interviewers were incredibly supportive—respectful, patient, and encouraging. Their calm demeanor really helped me settle down and get back on track. Once I got into the flow, I actually had a lot of fun. The task was engaging and did a great job of testing essential skills like debugging, understanding unfamiliar code, and applying fixes effectively. Honestly, if I had known in advance how enjoyable and fair the process would be, I wouldn’t have been nearly as nervous. To sum up: the interview team was fantastic, and the experience exceeded my expectations. If you're preparing for an interview with Criteo—stay calm and trust yourself. You’ll do just fine. Big thanks to the team at Criteo for the opportunity, and best of luck to future candidates!

There were a couple basic phone screens then a 4 hour in-person interview. The questions were easy except there was one they asked you to solve recursively when it didn't make any sense to, and one system design question (from an old guy) which was about creating an RSS Feed. I asked several valid questions to clarify what they were looking for (as usual), and their answer each time was "It's just an RSS feed, haven't you seen one?" or "Don't you know this site? It's like that." I immediately followed up thanking them for the interview and I didn't hear back for 2 weeks, so I followed up again and was completely ghosted.