FICO Principal Software Engineer interview questions
based on 3 ratings - Updated Mar 20, 2026
Averageinterview difficulty
Mostly negativeinterview experience
How others got an interview
50%
Recruiter
Recruiter
50%
Employee Referral
Employee Referral
Interview search
3 interviews
FICO interviews FAQs
Candidates applying for Principal Software Engineer roles take an average of 7 days to get hired, when considering 2 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at FICO overall takes an average of 26 days.
Common stages of the interview process at FICO as a Principal Software Engineer according to 2 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 50%
Phone interview: 25%
Presentation: 25%
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There were five different rounds out of which four were technical and last one management, which was then followed by HR discussions lastly. All were of average to hard difficultly level. First round was just a discussion to understand profile and expalin the opportunity.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
System design round - to explain design of a rule engine
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at FICO in Jul 2022
Interview
Overall very messy process, ad hoc calls from the recruiters and ad-hoc interviews during early mornings/late nights by offshore interviewers on a very short notice. I took 4 technical interviews which weren't much different, no different data points collected, just felt like year 2000 interview style. After that, they down leveled and asked for more interviews. In the end, I was ghosted. What a waste of time!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1) Run down your resume, projects and experience 2) Typical Java interview questions 3) A few architecture questions like your ideal architecture, patterns, things to look for 4) Kubernetes questions
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at FICO (San Diego, CA) in Jun 2017
Interview
The interview process went very well. After the initial call it took about a week to arrange the onsite interview. They asked lots of questions related to database scalability; in my case MongoDB related. Everyone was courteous and very pleasant to speak with. I was offered water, coffee by just about everyone that came in contact with me.
The sad part in all of this is the fact that they never contacted me after the interview. Not a word; no emails - zip.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a a roomba like vacuum with a limited APIs like turn left, turn right, go forward, clean, detect clean area, how would you ensure you have traversed and cleaned an entire room. Bonus: how would you optimize to save energy?