What to assess in a software engineer
For a general software engineering role, assess the skills that transfer across languages and the habits that make AI-assisted work safe.
- Problem solving: breaking a vague problem into steps and choosing a simple approach first.
- Code reading: finding their way around unfamiliar code quickly.
- Design: structuring a feature so it can be tested and changed.
- Testing: writing tests that catch the bugs that matter.
- Communication: explaining a trade-off clearly to another engineer.
- AI fluency: prompting with context, verifying output, and recovering when the assistant is wrong.
Screening questions for software engineers
Hands-on code in the screen is TypeScript on Node. If your team works in another language, the screener can cover that experience in conversation, and design questions can use the whiteboard.
- Tell me about a bug that took you more than a day to find. How did you finally find it?
- Sketch how you would design a URL shortener. What breaks first as traffic grows?
- Write a function that groups a list of events by day, and the tests you would want for it.
- When did an AI assistant last give you wrong code? How did you notice?
- How do you decide what not to test?
The software engineering coding round
Pick the stack closest to the role: a React (Vite) app, a Next.js app, a React Native (Expo) app or a Node.js service. Each runs in a sandbox with starter files, tests, a terminal and a Cursor-like IDE with completions, file-aware chat and an agent. The round does not run Python, Java or Go.
You choose guarded or unguarded mode, enforced by the server. Code is tinted by authorship and the server reruns the tests at the end.
AI-fluency signals for a software engineer
| Signal | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Time to first prompt | Reasoning attempted before reaching for the AI. |
| Prompt quality | Specificity, attached context, and how few near-identical re-asks it took. |
| AI-generated share | The share of the final solution that came from accepted AI output. |
| Verification | Edits and test runs within 90 seconds of accepting AI output. |
| Over-reliance flags | Blocks over 280 characters accepted and never reviewed or tested. |
| Recovery | What happened after the AI was wrong: a fix, a re-prompt, or nothing. |
From scores to a decision
Fundamentals and AI fluency are scored separately and never averaged. Every round sits on one scorecard, where the lowest verdict is shown next to the average. A named person signs off every outcome.
Questions
Should software engineers be allowed to use AI in interviews?
If they will use it on the job, testing with it shows more. SynergicHire lets you choose guarded mode for fundamentals or unguarded mode for full-assistant work, and records how they used it.
Which languages can candidates code in?
Hands-on code is JavaScript and TypeScript: the screen's workspace is TypeScript on Node, and coding rounds run React, Next.js, Expo or Node.js projects. Other languages can be discussed in the screen.
What is AI fluency?
How well someone works with an AI assistant: how they prompt, whether they verify what it produces, and how they recover when it is wrong. SynergicHire scores it separately from fundamentals.
Can I add a hiring manager round?
Yes. Hiring manager, HR, panel and bar raiser rounds sit on the same record, with an optional meeting notetaker that captures audio and a transcript.