I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Morningstar (Chicago, IL)
Interview
The communication between the company and myself was good, and their recruitment/HR representative was quick to respond to any messages (including a rescheduling). It is a little annoying that they only really handle interviewing two days per week, but we were able to make it work.
Interview consisted of a phone screen as well as a few hours of in-person interviews in their office. In-person interviews involved problem solving/code reviews with a few engineers, talking with a project manager about the company and general "how would you deal with scope creep" kinds of questions, and a culture fit conversation.
You are also given a code challenge, with 40 or so minutes to complete as much as you can.
Unfortunately, they offered a rate of pay substantially smaller than what was reasonable for the role they were interviewing for.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Given a piece of paper with code and asked to review it for errors.
round 1 Is a 30 minute interview with the senior manager, basically does a deep dive into projects and skills in your resume and then technical questions. round 2 Is onsite
I asked the HR contact what type of questions/assessment the interview would consist of, and they said whiteboarding technical problems. The actual interview surprisingly was questions about my experiences instead.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How did you and your team for this project on your resume decide on your tech stack?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Morningstar (London, England) in Nov 2025
Interview
2 hour interview with different stages:
- review of a take home technical task
- technical questions
- coding problem
- design challenge
- team fit
- questions
I didn't pass the technical part - so never got to team fit/questions stage.
But the first part felt unpleasant due to interviewers attitude.
There were 2 interviewers (Senior Software Engineers) who introduced themselves, but never given me time to introduce myself as well - I had to take initiative myself to do that.
I am not a star developer and I can understand I might have made not a very good impression, but this does not entitle interviewers to treat me without respect. In the end it's them who invited me to the interview.
Sometimes it felt like they didn't even listen to what I was answering and then telling me things as if I didn't told same things before.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- Access modifiers in C++
- Polymorphism in C++
- Templates in C++
- Difference between stack and heap
- Difference between malloc and new
- RAAI
- What is deadlock