Coding exercises used in Bioscope's engineering interviews.
Each exercise lives in its own directory under exercises/. The format varies by exercise — see the README inside each directory for the prompt and any setup instructions.
Most exercises are designed for a ~60 minute pairing session with an interviewer. You're welcome to read through the prompt ahead of time, but the actual work happens live, together.
How you think and solve problems is far more important in the interview than a polished, final result:
- How do you read and reason about unfamiliar code?
- What do you prioritize when you can't fix everything?
- How do you communicate trade-offs?
- How do you decide when something is "good enough"?
- When under pressure, how do you communicate with those around you?
To answer these questions, we offer a selection of standard exercises that come in two types:
- No-AI type, which ask you to solve a small programming problem without the use of any AI tooling (including AI autocomplete).
- AI-assisted type, in which you may use as much AI tooling as you like to solve a much larger problem.
You are free to choose which type and which exercise you'd like to work on during the interview.
| # | Title | Language | Type | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Build an SDK, Then Use It | Python | AI-assisted | AI tooling, SDK design, integration refactor |
| 02 | Build a JSON sanitization Library | Any | No-AI | Navigating ambiguity, recursive data handling, craftsmanship |
We expect you to have the tooling you need to solve the exercise you choose. This means having at minimum the following set up and ready to go at the interview time:
- A computer with Zoom installed and a working camera
- An active Internet connection with bandwidth / latency suitable for a video interview
- Your IDE of choice
- If using AI-assistance, enough credits for ~60 minute of coding OR the ability to use an Anthropic API key we provide
- The ability to share your screen without showing personal information