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      Canonical

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      Software Engineer Interview

      May 18, 2023
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Tacoma, WA
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Canonical (Tacoma, WA) in Mar 2023

      Interview

      OVERVIEW I interviewed for the software engineering position on the 'starcraft' team, specifically working on packaging linux applications. This position predominately used Python. Each step took 1 - 2 weeks to hear back from them, and they offer no feedback for each step. I will outline the steps below. ROUND 1 - ONLINE ALGORITHM ASSESSMENT They send you a link to a coding platform where you just complete your typical algorithm question. I think they give you ~30 min per question if I remember. I was given 2, the first question required familiarity with Python's datetime library, I managed to solve this one. The second question was quite difficult, you had to parse a string into a 2D array and then answer a question, I didn't manage to solve the second question. ROUND 2 - PSYCHOMETRIC ASSESSMENT You are given a link to quite a time consuming test which took me a couple of hours. You answer weird questions such as 'Jack is taller than Bob, who is shorter?'. You are graded on accuracy and time to complete each question. I believe they secretly just use this test to weed out people who aren't good at English comprehension. ROUND 3 - QUESTION AND ANSWER ESSAY You receive a questionnaire and have to provide a response for each question. This round took me a couple of hours to fill out the whole questionnaire. For example 'Do you have any experience with packaging software, if so please elaborate', and 'where you a goo student in high school'. ROUND 4 - VIRTUAL INTERVIEW You interview with 2 software devs, each being ~45 - 60 minutes I think. They literally just ask you trivia like questions to do with Linux. If you search 'top linux questions' on Google you will get a good idea of what kind of questions they will ask. Also the devs that I spoke to seemed quite junior, nothing against that as I am also junior/mid level, however that was still a little bit of a surprise. Overall they seemed quite nice. ROUND 5 - TAKE HOME ASSIGNMENT This was the final round I made it to. This round took me 5 hours total from start to finish. I had to make a command line application that made a simple get request to an online repo they provide, then you just parse the data you receive. The parsing is the only algorithmic part of the challenge because they want you to count how many times a particular thing appears, the rest of it is not too bad if you're familiar with Python. Ultimately they also want you to zip up your solution and send to them which is fairly trivial if you're developing on Linux, in my case a Linux virtual machine. Overall I actually quite enjoyed this round, it was kind of fun to do a challenge that wasn't you typical algorithm question and if your familiar with Python it shouldn't take too long. FINAL After completing each round it takes ~1-2 weeks to hear back from them. 2 weeks after completing round 5 I got rejected with no feedback.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Q: basic linux operating system questions
      1 Answer
      1

      Other Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Canonical

      Software Engineer Interview

      Jul 9, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Phoenix, AZ
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Canonical (Phoenix, AZ)

      Interview

      Brutally long and difficult. They take their time so only apply if you have time and are dedicated to open source tech. That being said they are very communicative so if you have any questions its not such a black box.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      They'll ask for specific niche aspects of coding languages to check if you actually use them day to day.
      Answer question

      Software Engineer Interview

      May 13, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Canonical

      Interview

      It's an extremely long process that includes standardized tests, take home assignments, and several rounds of interviews. It was at least 5 rounds long and you interview across different teams.

      Software Engineer Interview

      May 12, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      London, England
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through other source. I interviewed at Canonical (London, England)

      Interview

      They have a really long, tiring interview process. The first round was a written interview where I had to answer like 15 questions. Then a coding interview with 1 hour time that I could do anytime for 2 weeks. Then I had to take a personality test and they totally ghosted me.

      Canonical interviews FAQs

      • Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Canonical with 3.2 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 16% positive. To compare, the company-average is 14.9% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
      • Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 53 days to get hired, when considering 155 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Canonical overall takes an average of 51 days.
      • Common stages of the interview process at Canonical as a Software Engineer according to 155 Glassdoor interviews include:

        Personality test:  19%

        Skills test:  19%

        IQ intelligence test:  17%

        One on one interview:  16%

        Phone interview:  12%

        Other:  7%

        Presentation:  3%

        Background check:  3%

        Group panel interview:  2%

        Drug test:  1%

      • Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -

        1. Software Engineer(96) ;
        2. Engineering Manager(20) ;
        3. Sales Development Representative (SDR)(14) ;
        4. Senior Software Engineer(12) ;
        5. Sales(11) ;
        6. Director(8) ;
        7. Manager(8) ;
        8. Product Manager(8) ;
        9. Technical Support Engineer(8) ;
        10. Software Developer(6) ;
        11. Software Engineer I(6) ;
        12. Project Manager(5) ;
        13. Sales Executive(5) ;
        14. Cloud Operations Engineer(4) ;
        15. Engineer(4) .


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