Table of contents

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

Where do I apply for a Salesforce interview?

Apply through the Salesforce careers site, or use this LinkedIn strategy to reach a Salesforce recruiter or engineer directly.

Salesforce hires for a specific team and title, so read the job post closely. The same process tests very different things depending on whether you're applying as a new grad or a lead engineer.

What topics should I study for?

• Dictionaries (hash map questions come up a lot, like grouping anagrams)
• Two pointers
• Sliding window
• Intervals
• Heaps (top-k questions are common)
• Linked list manipulation
• Graph (and tree) traversal
  • Tree breadth first search
  • Graph depth first search
  • Graph breadth first search
• Dynamic programming (the last problem on the online test is often DP or graphs)
• Time/space analysis
• Object-oriented design, especially if you're interviewing in Java

Most Salesforce teams work in Java, and some interviewers expect it. Python is usually fine for coding rounds, but ask your recruiter. If the team is Java-heavy, be ready to explain inheritance, polymorphism, and interfaces in plain words.

What are some example Salesforce technical questions?

• Group words that are anagrams of each other.
• Return the k most frequent IDs from an access log.
• Remove every run of k identical characters in a row from a string.
• A linked list holds the bits of a binary number. Return its decimal value.
• Find the number of islands on the map.
• Find the longest substring without repeating characters.
• Find the longest common prefix of a list of strings.
• Check whether a string is a properly formatted email address.
• Implement an LRU cache.
• Design a rate limiter that gives each customer its own API quota.
• Design a notification system or a job scheduler.

Expect a follow-up after you solve the problem. For the access log question, that sounds like: what if the log is too big for one machine, or what if a thousand customers share it? Salesforce runs one platform for many companies at once, so "how do you keep one customer from slowing down everyone else" is a favorite follow-up in design rounds.

What are some example Salesforce behavioral questions?

• Tell me about a time you caught a problem that would have hurt customers.
• Tell me about a production incident you owned. What did you change afterward?
• Tell me about a time customer feedback changed your plan.
• Tell me about a disagreement with a teammate and how you worked it out.
• Why Salesforce?

Salesforce's values are trust, customer success, innovation, equality, and sustainability. Trust and customer success come up the most in interviews. Don't recite the list. Bring stories where a customer was better off because of something you did, and say what you measured.

How long is the entire Salesforce interview process?

Most candidates hear back within three to six weeks from the recruiter screen. Scheduling the onsite panel is usually the slow part.

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

Recruiter phone screen (30 minutes)

Your background, why you want the role, salary expectations, and a check on what level you fit.

HackerRank online assessment (60-90 minutes)

Two or three problems, proctored with your camera on and the browser in full screen. The first problem is usually friendly. The last one is harder and tends to involve graphs, dynamic programming, or a greedy approach. Many candidates are cut here, so treat it like a real interview round and not a formality.

Virtual onsite (3-5 rounds, about an hour each)

Typical composition:

• 1-2 coding interviews, usually LeetCode medium, with time to talk through edge cases and complexity
• 1 design interview. For new grads this might be an LRU cache or a small object-oriented design. From senior level up, a real system design round is a pass/fail gate.
• 1 behavioral interview built around the values above

Hiring manager interview (30-60 minutes)

A conversation about your resume and past projects. It also works as team match, so come with questions about what the team actually builds.

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

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

Salesforce pays more of its package as base salary and bonus than most big tech companies, and less as stock. Stock usually vests over four years: 25% after your first year, then monthly after that.

How should I prepare?

Practice timed sets of two or three medium problems, because the HackerRank test is the biggest filter. Get comfortable with hash maps, heaps, and graphs first, since they show up the most. After each problem, ask yourself what changes if many customers share the same data. Then write down three or four stories about customers, incidents, and disagreements before your onsite. Start with how to prepare for a technical interview if you're early in your prep.