SDE II Interview Experience at Abnormal AI
Abnormal AI Interview Experience (Software Engineer II)
I recently interviewed with Abnormal AI for a Software Engineer II position and wanted to share my experience.
Round 1 – AI-Assisted Machine Coding
The first round was a machine coding interview. I was given a problem to implement, and the interview explicitly allowed the use of AI tools during development. The focus wasn't just on writing working code—it was equally about explaining the implementation, code structure, design decisions, and trade-offs. The interviewer spent a significant amount of time discussing the architecture, maintainability, and why I had chosen a particular approach. I cleared this round.
Round 2 – Incident Management + System Design
The second round started with a production incident that I had to investigate and resolve. After that, we had an in-depth system design discussion covering scalability, reliability, bottlenecks, and architectural trade-offs. It felt like a collaborative technical discussion rather than a rapid-fire interview, and the interviewer seemed satisfied with my approach and reasoning.
The following day, I received a rejection email without any feedback.
One thing that made the experience confusing was that on the morning of the rejection, I noticed hiring managers from Abnormal AI had viewed my LinkedIn profile. While I don't know whether that was related to the hiring decision, it left me wondering if there were profile-related concerns that could have been identified earlier in the process.
I completely understand that interview outcomes are subjective, and not every good interview results in an offer. That's part of interviewing.
My only feedback for the company is this: if candidates are investing several hours across multiple technical rounds, a brief piece of feedback—or clearer communication about the evaluation—would make the experience much more valuable. Even a couple of lines can help candidates understand where they fell short and improve for future interviews.
I just wish the process had been a bit more transparent.