Kalepa Software Engineer interview questions

Overall, it was a very straightforward process. They asked about my background and interests, while also presenting the opportunity details and challenges. The feedback was sent on the next day and even though it was a negative, it was nice to hear from them so quickly

Was approached by an internal recruiter about a SWE role with Kalepa. The comms were a little hectic. The first step was to take a mandatory HackerRank test, bit of a red flag. 2 of the 3 HackerRank questions were very easy. The last one roughly medium difficulty. Next step was to meet with a senior engineer for 1 hour. Learned more about the company. During the conversation some more red flags were brought to my attention; similar to other reviews, it was very much suggested that the company advocates the work is not a traditional 9 to 5. It is expected to work more than 40 hours per week (probably an average of 50 to 60 hours per week as other reviews suggest). The interviewer said that if hired this would be the second US based SWE. Most of the software staff seems to be based in the EU (I wonder why). The first half of the interview consisted of some brain teaser gotcha questions, no questions pertaining to system design or much relevance to the role. The second half of the hour long interview was a coding challenge. Similar to another review was asked to implemented a scraper to parse images from Getty Images for a given search term. Was initially told I could use whichever language or libraries I prefer. I initially considered NodeJS or Python, only to then be told to disregard and must use Python. I was told to fetch the contents of the page and parse with BeautifulSoup4, which was not possible. I brought it to the interviewer's attention that the images are most likely being fetched on page load via JavaScript, and we would need to use a tool like Playwright or Selenium to fetch the dynamic content. From what I recall the interviewer was a backend engineer and may not have understood the issue I was raising their suggested approach. It seemed as though the interviewer did not implement or solve the prompt I was given. They seemed stumped as to why it wasn't working as expected. Was relieved for the interview to be over and decided it would be best not to move forward with the company. The last thing I would want is to make it to the final round interview, speak to their CEO and similar to another reviewer get potentially roasted if I don't express joy at the prospect of working 60 hour work weeks. Your mileage may vary; be cautious if applying for an engineering position.