Tesla Software Engineer, Backend interview questions
based on 4 ratings - Updated Apr 1, 2026
Averageinterview difficulty
Mostly negativeinterview experience
How others got an interview
50%
Recruiter
Recruiter
50%
Applied online
Applied online
Interview search
4 interviews
Tesla interviews FAQs
Software Engineer, Backend applicants have rated the interview process at Tesla with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 25% positive. To compare, the company-average is 55.1% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer, Backend roles take an average of 19 days to get hired, when considering 4 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Tesla overall takes an average of 33 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Tesla as a Software Engineer, Backend according to 4 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 75%
Presentation: 25%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied online. I interviewed at Tesla (Fremont, CA) in Feb 2025
Interview
Had my interviews around February 2025. First round was a recruiter screening, where we went over my resume and experience briefly, as well as what the next stage of the interviews is.
Second interview was a technical round. I was expecting the typical DSA round, but was surprised that it was a deep dive into Java. The interview was pretty much consistent questions about the java language, internals, how GC worked, when to use "static", etc. etc.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the difference between Spring boot and Spring?
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Tesla in Jun 2020
Interview
I was reached out by a HR recruiter on Linkedin. He talked to me over the phone to get some information about my experience and what I'm looking for in the next role. He set a call with the technical recruiter in a few days.
Awful technical recruiter call. It was a video call where the technical recruiter (the engineering manager of the team they were hiring) talked to me. He asked me about my background and within a few minutes, I saw him distracted and not interested to talk or ask any more questions. I wouldn't have upset him by talking about my background as they already had my resume and I was just elaborating what was mentioned on the resume.
Very unprofessional of him to not be attentive on a video call. WORST EXPERIENCE. Would never consider to interview for the company again.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Tesla (Fremont, CA) in Nov 2019
Interview
Background: 4 Years of experience as Software Engineer
First round: Recruiter call for 30 minutes discussing my background and my expectations from next role.
Codility: Was given online assessment containing 2 programming questions and 1 sql question.
After test, recruiter contacted me in couple days asking me that they want to move forward. But then I was handed off to another recruiter who works for team in Seattle. I was asked to come onsite in Fremont with some video interviews with folks in Seattle.
Onsite consisted of 5 rounds:
Chat with PM -> team fit style questions
Lunch interview
tech round -> data modelling question
chat with manager -> team fit style questions
tech round -> interviewer was in no mood for interview. He was really tired. Asked me some simple string manipulation question for the sake of it. Finished interview 15 minutes before scheduled. At that point itself I knew I am not getting this job.
I cannot share any specific questions due to NDA. But overall, it was not a very difficult interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Codility assessment:
Minimum number of characters to delete from a string so that each character appears unique number of times. Note: You can delete all occurances of characters.
eg: "aaaabbbb" -> 1 "a" or 1"b" would make "a" and "b" appear unique number of times.
Given number in binary form, if its even -> you can divide it by 2; if its odd -> you can substract 1 from it. You can repeat above steps as many times as you want to reach 0. How many steps it took to reach zero?
SQL question to select records from two tables using joins etc.