Table of contents

• Where do I apply for a Bloomberg interview?
• What topics should I study for?
• What are some example Bloomberg technical questions?
• What are some example Bloomberg behavioral questions?
• How long is the entire Bloomberg interview process?
• What is the Bloomberg interview like for a full time software engineering role?
• What are the levels and salary for a software engineer at Bloomberg?
• How should I prepare?

Where do I apply for a Bloomberg interview?

Apply through the Bloomberg careers site. You can also use this LinkedIn strategy to reach a Bloomberg recruiter or engineer directly.

Bloomberg runs a separate application process just for engineering students and new grads. If you're finishing school, apply through that track instead of the general job listings.

What topics should I study for?

• Dictionaries (Bloomberg asks a lot of hash map questions)
• Two pointers
• Sliding window
• Intervals
• Linked list manipulation
• Heaps
• Graph (and tree) traversal
  • Tree breadth first search
  • Graph depth first search
• Backtracking
• Dynamic programming
• Object-oriented design (designing classes for a small system)
• System design (for mid-level and senior roles)

You can code in Python, Java, or C++. Bloomberg runs on a huge C++ codebase, but new grads don't need to know C++ to get hired. Use whatever language you're fastest in. The coding pad is a plain editor with no autocomplete, so practice somewhere similar before your screen.

Object-oriented design shows up more at Bloomberg than at most big tech companies, even for new grads. You might get asked to build something like a stack that can also return its minimum, or a cache that throws out the least recently used item. Then the interviewer will ask why you picked your data structures and what you'd change if the requirements shifted.

What are some example Bloomberg technical questions?

• Find two numbers in a list that add up to a target.
• Find the longest substring with no repeating characters.
• Merge overlapping intervals.
• Count the islands on a grid.
• Return every subset of a list.
• Design an LRU cache.
• Design a stack that returns its minimum value in constant time.
• Design a hit counter that tells you how many hits came in during the last five minutes.
• Design the classes for a small system, then explain the trade-offs of your design.
• Design an order matching engine for a stock exchange. (Senior roles)
• Design storage for historical stock prices. (Senior roles)

Most rounds give you two problems in an hour. Many candidates practice from the list of Bloomberg-tagged problems on LeetCode, and people who've been through the loop say it lines up well with what they got. Expect follow-up questions about edge cases after you solve each one.

What are some example Bloomberg behavioral questions?

• Why Bloomberg?
• Where do you see your career going?
• Walk me through a project on your resume. Why did you build it that way?
• Tell me about something that failed and what you learned.
• Tell me about a conflict with a teammate.
• Are you interviewing anywhere else? Do you need visa sponsorship?

Take "Why Bloomberg?" seriously. Candidates say a generic answer, or one that sounds like it came out of a chatbot, can end your process. Learn what the Bloomberg Terminal does and who uses it. Then connect it to something real about you, like a finance class you liked or a project where you worked with messy data.

Interviewers also care more about how you made decisions than how impressive your project sounds. A simple class project you can explain honestly beats a flashy one you can't defend.

How long is the entire Bloomberg interview process?

Usually three to seven weeks. The phone screen results tend to come back quickly, sometimes within a few days. One new grad reported about six weeks from the first screen to the final round. The onsite can also move fast. Some candidates had their HR interview scheduled right after their coding rounds on the same day.

What is the Bloomberg interview like for a full time software engineering role?

The exact lineup changes by office, team, and level, but most people see something close to this.

Recruiter screen (30-45 minutes)

Your background, location, visa situation, and why you want to work at Bloomberg.

Technical phone screen (about 1 hour, sometimes two of them)

Live coding on HackerRank CodePair over Zoom. You'll usually spend the first few minutes talking about a project on your resume. Then you'll solve one or two medium problems and save a few minutes at the end for your own questions.

Virtual onsite

• Two coding rounds (about 1 hour each). Same shape as the phone screen: a quick resume chat, two problems, then your questions. Some candidates get a third coding round, and one of the rounds is often object-oriented design.
• HR interview (about 30 minutes). All behavioral. Expect "Why Bloomberg?" along with questions about your career goals, other offers, and visa needs.
• Engineering manager round (about 40-60 minutes). A senior engineer or manager digs into your resume and asks why you made the choices you did. Some candidates also get a light system design question here.

Experienced hires often get extra rounds. A full system design interview is common from mid-level up. Some candidates also report a code review round, where you get a long chunk of existing code and have to find the bugs, like you're reviewing a teammate's pull request. Ask your recruiter if your loop includes one. It's a very different skill from solving problems on a blank page.

What are the levels and salary for a software engineer at Bloomberg?

*Note that compensation varies based on location. These estimates are likely based on the USA HCOL market.

Bloomberg's pay looks different from most tech companies. It's a private company, so you won't get stock. Your pay is base salary plus a yearly cash bonus. That makes the number easier to understand, but it also means there's no chance of a stock run-up. Keep that in mind if you're comparing it to an offer with a big equity grant.

How should I prepare?

Work through the Bloomberg-tagged LeetCode list after you're comfortable with the patterns above. Practice a few object-oriented design problems out loud, because that's the part most people skip. Write down a real answer to "Why Bloomberg?" and say it out loud until it sounds like you. And pick two projects from your resume that you can explain decision by decision. If you're early in your prep, start with how to prepare for a technical interview, and read what interviewers look for so you know how the rounds get scored.