Cloudflare Software Engineer in London: hiring manager chat, culture fit, PM round, HTTP server debugging, Instagram for cats and an AI-assisted coding round

I applied for the software engineer position in London. Started with a 30-minute conversation with the hiring manager. He was amazing, very very friendly, and the questions were mostly resume-based.

The interview loop consisted of 5 rounds:

• Culture fit, 30 mins: behavioral questions, study STAR, the behavioral playbook was perfect for this. Also read the Life at Cloudflare page and the Cloudflare Blog. The interviewer was really impressed and I knew I was into the next round.

• PM interview, 45 mins: This was all behavioral again, questions focused on collaboration with other PMs, more STAR structured answers. They asked for examples of times I've worked in a team, dealt with conflict, all pretty predictable questions.

• Debugging round, 45 mins: Debugging a working system, fairly easy. They gave me a codebase which was describing a HTTP server but the routing was broken which I had to fix.

• System design, 1hr: I was asked to design an Instagram for cats. Study the design Instagram here and it covers exactly what you need for that.

• AI-assisted coding round, 45 mins: They gave me a React + TS app with a UI and API already built and asked me to build out 4 extra features. I was allowed to use Google and AI for whatever I wanted.

Overall, all the interviewers were great to interact with and very supportive throughout the process. After clearing these rounds, the final steps included an office visit and a 15-minute call with a CXO.