How We Hire Software (Product) Engineers at V7

The Talent Call (30 minutes)

First up, you’ll have a low-pressure conversation with someone from the Talent team to figure out if we're a good mutual fit. We’ll tell you about V7, what we're building, and answer any questions you have about the role, team structure, or company culture.

On our end, we’re mainly trying to understand what you're looking for in your next role and what kinds of problems excite you. It's helpful to have a few examples of projects you've worked on and what motivated you to work on them, so we can match you with the right team if things progress.

If there's anything we can do to make the process more accessible for you, please let us know! We're happy to provide reasonable adjustments, and we want to set you up for success.

The Hiring Manager Call (30 minutes)

If it’s a good fit, your next step will be speaking with the Hiring Manager for the role. This conversation is focused on understanding how you think about impact and how you've delivered value to customers in your previous work.

We're not looking for you to recite feature lists from your resume. Instead, we want to hear stories about how you understood a problem, made decisions about what to build, and ultimately moved the needle for users or the business. Maybe you shipped something that dramatically improved performance, or perhaps you identified a gap in the product that your team hadn't considered.

The best conversations happen when you can connect the technical work you did to the real-world impact it had. Think about examples where you:

• Understood a customer problem deeply before jumping to a solution

• Made tradeoffs between different approaches and can explain your reasoning

• Measured the success of what you built

Don't worry about overselling yourself. We’re just looking to understand how you think about product and impact alongside your technical work.

The Systems Design Interview (60 minutes)

This is where we dig into how you approach designing scalable systems. You'll work with an engineer on a problem that involves processing large volumes of events, which is the kind of challenge we actually face at V7.

You don’t need to memorize system design patterns or have the "right" answer ready to go. Instead, we want to see how you:

• Ask clarifying questions to understand requirements

• Break down a complex problem into manageable pieces

• Think about scalability, reliability, and tradeoffs

• Communicate your thought process clearly

Please think out loud during this interview. Walk us through your reasoning, tell us when you're making decisions, and don't be afraid to discuss the tradeoffs you're considering. The engineers interviewing you are there to help, and if you start going down a path that won't work, they'll nudge you back on track.

This is much more like collaborating with a colleague than being tested in a vacuum.

If it helps, you can have a tool ready to sketch out architectures, whether that's Excalidraw, a whiteboard tool, or even pen and paper held up to the camera. Whatever helps you communicate your ideas most effectively is fine.

The Take Home Task

After the systems design interview, we'll send you a practical exercise that tackles a real problem an engineer might work on at V7. This is your chance to show us how you approach problems when you have time to think, research, and present a considered solution.

We're looking for three things:

1. A written report explaining how you'd tackle the problem and your proposed architecture

2. A short Loom recording (or similar) walking us through your approach

3. Your thought process — the "why" behind your decisions

You don't need to write production-ready code. We care much more about your architectural thinking, how you break down problems, and how you communicate your ideas. What tradeoffs did you consider? What would you do differently with more time? What assumptions did you make?

We know you have a life outside of interviewing. We've designed this to take a few hours, not a whole weekend. If you need more time due to other commitments, just let us know. We're flexible and want you to be able to put your best foot forward.

The Final Onsite (60 minutes)

The final stage brings it all together. You'll meet with our Engineering Manager, CTO, and get introduced to the team. This is partially about us getting to know you better, but it's equally important that you get a feel for the people you'd be working with.

We'll pull up your take-home task and really dig into it. Think of this as a collaborative design session where we throw your architecture on a whiteboard and stress-test it together. We'll discuss edge cases, potential improvements, and explore different scenarios.

We're looking to see how you think through problems collaboratively and respond to new constraints or ideas.

We'll also spend time talking about more foundational engineering topics. How do you approach testing? How do you think about reliability? What's your philosophy on technical debt? We genuinely want to understand how you think about building software.

You'll have plenty of time to ask questions too. This is your chance to understand our engineering culture, how we work, and whether V7 is the right place for you.

What Happens Next?

After your interviews wrap up, we'll collect feedback from everyone involved and make a decision. Regardless of the outcome, your Talent partner will provide you with full, honest feedback on how things went.

We know interviewing is a two-way street. We want you to have enough information to decide if V7 is right for you, just as we're trying to figure out if we're a good fit for what you're looking for.

If you have any questions about the process or V7 in general, don't hesitate to ask your Talent partner. And if you're reading this and haven't applied yet but are intrigued by what we're building, we'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for considering V7. We're excited to meet you.