I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Bitvavo (Amsterdam)
Interview
First it was a HR interview which was good and HR was really friendly.
Second Interview was a task in hackerRank which you had your camera on.
Third interview was with two techlead that both were friendly and professional and I really learned and enjoyed the interview.
They rejected me but had a feedback and I realy loved the interview process and wish them luck.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. implementing a simple bank or some leetcode questions but there were about to build something and not just an algorithm question.
2. were about heap, stack, GC, distributed systems, transactions in DB, Kafka and how it works, event driven arch, JVM, monitoring and observability, profiling tools in db and apm.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We're really glad to hear that you enjoyed the interview process and appreciate your kind words about the team. We value your feedback and wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Positive experience
Difficult interview
Application
I applied online. I interviewed at Bitvavo (Amsterdam)
Interview
The interview process has 3 rounds. First round was technical round with java questions and some DB, backend questions. Second round was system design round. The recruiter was very sweet and kept in touch and guided during all the stages.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Bitvavo (Amsterdam) in July 2025
Interview
The interview process consists of one screening and four rounds:
1. Hackerrank test (camera required):
This part was smooth and well-structured. My test involved four questions: one “complete the code” task, one SQL aggregation question, and two LeetCode-style medium problems.
2. Technical Interview:
The job description emphasized deep experience with event-driven architectures, Kafka, distributed systems, and general JVM-language backend development. Based on that, I expected the technical round to explore real engineering scenarios, trade-offs, design discussions, and my experience building such systems.
The interviewers did touch on topics like Kafka, event-driven architecture, databases, observability, and CI/CD, but almost entirely through surface-level theoretical questions rather than digging into real-world experience. The only section where they probed deeply was JVM internals — specifically trivia-style questions about object allocation, the heap, and which objects get garbage collected in a short code snippet.
What makes this more concerning is the feedback I received afterward: they explicitly said my event-driven and distributed systems knowledge was strong (the very skills highlighted in the job description), but rejected me due to a lack of depth in JVM internals. This is puzzling, because low-level JVM behavior of that sort is not typically part of daily work for senior backend engineers unless the role is explicitly focused on performance internals.
The mismatch between what the role advertised and what the interview prioritized was significant. The technical assessment seemed weighted toward JVM trivia rather than the practical engineering skills needed to build and scale event-driven systems. Candidates should be aware that despite the job description, the evaluation criteria may lean heavily on detailed JVM internals rather than the applied, senior-level architectural and systems knowledge the role appears to require.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Example questions asked during the technical round:
The interview covered a wide range of topics, but many of the questions were oriented toward older, trivia-style JVM knowledge rather than practical system engineering. Some examples include:
“What are the main components of Kafka?” (high-level theoretical question with no discussion of real-world usage or trade-offs)
A code snippet involving static fields and inter-referencing objects, followed by:
“Explain what happens on the heap and which objects are garbage collected.”
“Explain how JIT and HotSpot perform optimizations.”
JVM memory model and GC trivia that can generally be looked up or observed with tooling.
“What are ACID properties?” (again, pure theory instead of deeper practical DB reasoning)
These questions leaned more toward textbook knowledge and JVM internals than the applied, real-world engineering challenges expected for a senior-level backend position.
