Bolt develops exciting alternatives to cars. They want to reverse private car dependency to counteract the environmental issues created by car-centered living. Bolt mostly hires middle- and senior-level engineers or higher for hybrid roles in Europe and Africa and occasionally hosts short internships.
Are you interested in making a difference and working in a hybrid environment?
Below, we break down the Bolt interview process and the top questions you should expect to answer.
What is the Bolt interview process?
The Bolt interview process varies slightly depending on the role you interview for, but it usually takes place virtually and includes four rounds.
Bolt is upfront about its fast-paced working environment and looks for candidates with strong ownership, collaboration, adaptability, and problem-solving skills.
The Bolt interview process is variable, meaning it changes depending on the role, but it typically takes about a month and involves:
- Recruiter screen,
- Technical screen,
- Technical interview,
- Hiring manager interview.
Recruiter phone screen
Bolt’s interview process starts with a recruiter phone or virtual call. Prepare to discuss your background and resume.
Although it's an informal chat, research Bolt beforehand so you can speak to their mission, values, and current company goals and prove your culture fit. Also, expect to talk about your personal interests and career goals.
Bolt often hires for similar roles on various teams, so this call assesses appropriate team fit, too.
Bolt’s values:
- Act like an owner.
- Have fun!
- Great people over complex processes.
- We challenge each other but mean well.
- Customer first.
- Extreme pragmatism.
- Work hard. Work smart.
- Be better, not different!
- Be frugal.
- Short-term pessimism, long-term optimism.
Technical screens
Bolt’s interview process continues with a technical screen. Engineers receive a one-hour, fifteen-minute algorithmic coding challenge on HackerRank with a live interviewer.
Expect coding questions of medium to hard difficulty. Other roles receive a take-home assessment of technical domain knowledge.
While the challenge tests for technical skills, Bolt doesn’t expect perfection. It also focuses on whether you communicate well, take ownership of your mistakes, and ask for clarification or help when needed.
Final rounds
From here, engineering candidates move on to a system design round, followed by a behavioral interview with the hiring manager.
Depending on the role, other roles get an interview (with the hiring manager or senior team members), which may be technical, conversational, or a presentation.
Either way, all roles end with a behavioral interview to ensure culture and team fit.
Top Bolt Interview Questions
Here are some sample interview questions asked at Bolt, as reported by real candidates:
Behavioral
- Why do you want to work here?
- Tell me about yourself.
- Tell me about a time when you handled a difficult stakeholder.
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone and how you resolved it.
- Tell me about a time when you made short-term sacrifices for long-term gains.
- Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
Coding
- What is the most challenging project you’ve worked on?
- Algorithms
- Hashing
- SQL
- Databases
- Microservice architectures
System design
- Distributed high-volume systems
- Architect a job scheduling system.
- Design an API for rides.
- Design a ride-hailing system.
- Architect a fraud detection system.
- Design an analytics system to process and display real-time user activity across the platform.
Machine learning
- How do different ML models work?
- How can we tell when a model needs to be refreshed?
- How do you select input for modeling if there are features highly correlated with each other?
- What's the importance of feature scaling and normalization?
- Train a model to detect bots.
Data science
- How do you improve a model’s accuracy?
- Statistics
- Experimentation
- Probability
- Linear regression
- Logistic regression
- Regularization
- Overfitting
Product management
- Should Bolt build a scheduling ride-hailing feature?
- What's your favorite product and why?
- How would you build any product using Gen AI?
- Your largest customer is advocating for a new feature not in your roadmap. What do you do?
Bolt Interview Loops Explained
Behavioral
All Bolt candidates end their interview process with a behavioral loop conducted by the hiring manager or senior team members.
The conversational interview assesses your ability to problem-solve, particularly with limited resources or time constraints, your ability to adapt, and your ability to collaborate, especially with good communication and conflict resolution.
Before your behavioral interview, prepare anecdotes from past experiences to prove your strengths in these areas. Look further into Bolt’s mission, values, and work environment, and come up with examples of how you fit in.
This interview checks culture fit and ensures team fit, which is especially important for roles requiring relocation. Ask questions to communicate your interest, and get paired with a team that fits your goals.
Coding
To join the Bolt engineering team, candidates must pass two technical rounds as their second and third interview steps: a live coding challenge and a system design interview.
Bolt engineers architect, design, develop, and deploy Bolt's growing front-end and back-end systems using JavaScript, Node.js, and TypeScript.
However, Bolt doesn’t require experience in these particular languages; they want to see a strong background in coding in general—writing clean, maintainable code—and an eagerness to learn. They want candidates who can work closely with product teams, contribute ideas and feedback, take ownership and leadership of projects, and make data-driven decisions.
System design
Engineering roles get their system design loop as the third step in the interview process. Expect to use a whiteboard platform like Excalidraw to answer a system design question involving an API. This loop assesses seniority level, so study ahead of time, and communicate thoroughly in the actual interview.
Ask questions upfront to clarify ambiguities, discuss multiple solutions as you go, explain trade-offs, identify scaling opportunities and potential risks or points of failure, and, during the entire interview, talk aloud about your thought process.
In Bolt’s system design interview, expect the following topics:
- APIs,
- Distributed systems,
- Data pipelines,
- Microservices,
- Availability,
- Scalability,
- Data-intensive applications.
Machine learning
Bolt uses machine learning and data science in their products for fraud detection, demand forecasting, and personalization. They want ML engineers who can manage the full ML lifecycle end-to-end, from data processing, building scalable models, and testing them, to deploying models, monitoring them, and measuring impact. And who are familiar with Python, SQL, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Docker, AWS SageMaker, Airflow, and big data tools.
Expect to get asked what ML model to use in different situations, and how you know if that particular model works well. Bolt focuses on real-time applications and data-driven optimization.
Data science
Bolt typically wants data scientists with experience in both data science and machine learning, along with a product mindset, and the ability to communicate to stakeholders. Bolt’s data science interview includes a technical take-home task, usually in Python, as well as a live technical interview which can include the following topics:
- SQL,
- Metrics,
- Statistics,
- Probability,
- Business case questions,
- Experimentation,
- A/B testing,
- ML optimization.
Product management
The PM interview process at Bolt typically includes a take-home case study assignment, a presentation of that assignment, and a discussion with the hiring manager or a senior team member before the final behavioral interview.
Bolt looks for product managers with a background of business impact in technology companies; a focus on users in their product development; experience working with many stakeholders across product, operations, and engineering; and the ability to make actionable plans based on data-driven decisions. Just like most roles at Bolt, they prioritize strong communication and leadership skills, too.
Bolt Interview Tips
Bolt values speed and ownership.
In Bolt’s own words, “We move fast and take ownership. People who enjoy this approach will feel at home here,” so evaluate first if you share these values. If so, highlight examples from past roles of the ways you work fast and take ownership or leadership.
Bolt is a hybrid workplace.
No matter the location, Bolt requires 12 days a month, or 2 days per week, to work in the office. Bolt has offices in Europe and Africa, as well as Mexico, Paraguay, and Thailand. Review Bolt’s locations page to find out if an office is near you.
Get to know Bolt inside and out.
Bolt’s alternatives to private cars extend into a bunch of different ventures, including rides, car-sharing, food delivery, grocery delivery, micromobility, business, and more. Get to know each of Bolt’s services and current ventures to appropriately answer practical interview questions.
FAQs
How competitive are Bolt interviews?
Bolt interviews are highly competitive. Bolt mainly only hires high-level engineers, and they do most of their hiring through head-hunting via LinkedIn.
If you got a first interview at Bolt, be proud of yourself! If you’re not there yet, both apply and also update your LinkedIn with appropriate keywords and bullet points of all past experiences to try and get noticed.
How should I prepare for my interview at Bolt?
Brush up on your technical skills. Bolt hires medium- to senior-level engineers and above, so the technical coding challenges are really important. Study up on system design in particular. After that, get to know their culture because Bolt puts a hefty emphasis on culture fit. They want candidates eager to learn, collaborate, and work in a fast-paced environment driven by the mission to reverse private car dependency. So demonstrate these aspects in all of your loops.
Does Bolt hire in the US?
Unfortunately, no. At least not yet. Bolt is a global company that provides services in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America, and has offices in Europe and Africa, as well as Mexico, Paraguay, and Thailand.
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