What does First American ask in software engineer interviews?

First American SWE interviews typically cover data structures and algorithms, system design, and behavioral questions. Candidates report coding rounds using LeetCode-style problems, plus architecture design and leadership questions for senior roles. LeakCode aggregates verified reports from 1+ candidates.

How many rounds does First American have in its interview process?

The First American interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, a phone/online assessment round, and 4-5 onsite or virtual interviews covering coding, system design, and behavioral competencies. The exact number of rounds varies by role and team.

How hard is it to get a job at First American?

First American is highly selective. Candidates report pass rates in the single digits for competitive engineering roles. Strong data structures fundamentals, system design ability, and clear communication are required to advance past initial screens.

What topics should I study for a First American interview?

Based on aggregated First American interview reports: arrays and hash maps, trees and graphs, dynamic programming, system design (distributed systems, databases, caching), and behavioral questions using the STAR method. LeakCode shows exactly which topics appear most often.

Does First American ask LeetCode hard questions?

Interview difficulty at First American varies. Coding rounds typically include medium to hard difficulty algorithmic problems. System design questions are open-ended and evaluated on depth of reasoning. Browse real First American interview questions on LeakCode to see the actual difficulty distribution.

First American Interview Questions (May 2026)

1 questions · 1p3a (1)

Read our First American interview guide

First American Senior Software Engineer Full Stack Interview Experience

SWE Senior

Question Details

Round 1 Coding Assessment** 1.

Food Distribution *

Problem: You are given an array where the first element N represents the number of sandwiches available, and the remaining elements represent the hunger levels of a row of people (ranging from 0 to 5). Distributing a sandwich to a person decreases their hunger level by 1. The goal is to distribute the sandwiches in a way that minimizes the sum of absolute differences between adjacent pairs of people. *

Example: *

Input: [5, 3, 1, 2, 1] * Action: Distribute sandwiches to achieve hunger levels [1, 1, 1, 1]. *

Output: 0 (Total difference is 0). *

Test Cases: *

Input: 5, 2, 3, 4, 5 $\rightarrow$

Output: 1 *

Input: 3, 2, 1, 0, 4, 1, 0 $\rightarrow$

Output: 4 2.

String Manipulation *

Problem: Given a sentence containing alphabets, numbers, and symbols, write a function to remove all non-alphabetic characters and return the cleaned sentence. *

Example: *

Input: cats AND*Dogs-are Awesome *

Output: cats ANDDogsare Awesome

Round 2 System Design** *

Problem: Design a real-estate rental application similar to NoBroker. *

Requirements: The design must account for two distinct workflows: 1.

Owner Workflow: Listing properties and managing inquiries. 2.

Tenant Workflow: Searching for properties and connecting with owners.

Round 3 Technical Concepts (Frontend & Backend)** *

Infrastructure: Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Container Services. *

Security: Code security best practices. *

Rendering & Performance: Comparison of Server-Side Rendering (SSR) vs. Client-Side Rendering (CSR) and general optimization techniques.

Round 4 Security and Scaling** *

Authentication & Authorization: Identity and Access Management (IAM), JSON Web Tokens (JWT), and OAuth workflows. *

DevOps: Deployment strategies. *

Database: Techniques for database scaling.

Free preview — 6 questions shown. Unlock all First American questions →

Topics

Arrays Probability Stats Sql Stack Strings System Design

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First American Interview Process Overview

The First American interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one to two technical phone screens, and a 4-6 round on-site or virtual on-site loop. Each round serves a distinct calibration purpose: coding rounds measure correctness, code quality, and complexity reasoning; system design rounds measure architectural judgment at the appropriate level; behavioral rounds measure ownership, leadership scope, and collaboration. Reports tagged on LeakCode from 2024-2026 show First American runs a calibrated process consistent with industry norms for companies of its tier.

Difficulty calibration: First American coding rounds typically run medium difficulty with follow-up depth as the senior discriminator. System design rounds expect production-grade trade-off articulation at L4+ levels. Behavioral rounds expect quantified outcomes ("reduced p99 latency from 800ms to 120ms") rather than vague impact claims. The candidates who advance consistently demonstrate clear thinking out loud rather than perfect final answers.

How To Use First American Question Reports

Real candidate-reported interview questions are a calibration tool, not a memorization target. First American updates its question pool every 2-4 months; memorizing exact problems risks misleading you when the interviewer uses a variant. The high-leverage approach: identify the patterns that appear repeatedly in First American reports, practice those patterns on similar (not identical) problems, and use the reports to understand the interviewer's typical follow-up depth.

Filter the questions above by round type, difficulty, and recency. Focus first on reports from the past 6-12 months; older reports may reference questions that have since rotated out of First American's pool. Reports tagged with quantified difficulty and explicit round type are higher-signal than reports without those tags. The metadata filters help you build a focused study plan in 1-2 hours rather than 8-10 hours of unstructured browsing.

Common First American Interview Mistakes

Reports tagged "no hire" at First American consistently surface a few patterns: jumping into code without clarifying requirements, coding silently for extended periods, missing edge cases (empty input, single element, large input, overflow), producing working code the candidate cannot refactor when probed, and behavioral stories that use "we" instead of "I" diluting individual signal. Strong candidates explicitly avoid these patterns by following a consistent round template.

The single most predictive failure mode in recent reports: not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this dimension. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into implementation immediately. Strong candidates also verbalize their approach before writing code; weak candidates code in silence and lose the communication dimension of the round's calibration.