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Growth · Software Engineer Interview Guide

How to Pass the Alan Software Engineer Interview in 2026

The Alan DNA (TL;DR)

Alan values candidates demonstrating strong problem-solving, user empathy, and a collaborative mindset. They seek individuals passionate about simplifying health insurance and improving user experience, emphasizing clear communication and a proactive approach to challenges within a regulated environment.

English original + your local-language translation

Tech and global multinational interviews are most often conducted in English. For industries like luxury, finance, or pharma, the working language may be local. We show every question in English first — alongside your local-language translation — so you can prep in whichever language your interviewer ends up using.

The Alan Interview Loop

Your onsite loop will typically consist of 5 rounds.

  1. 1

    Round 1

    Recruiter Screen
    Motivation, role fit, logistics.
  2. 2

    Round 2

    Coding Screen
    LeetCode-medium algorithmic problems under time pressure.
  3. 3

    Round 3

    System Design
    Distributed systems, trade-offs at scale, architecture under constraints.
  4. 4

    Round 4

    Onsite Coding
    LeetCode-hard, debugging, code clarity, edge cases.
  5. 5

    Round 5

    Behavioral / Leadership
    Past evidence of ownership, influence, resolving conflict.

The Danger Zone: Top Reasons Candidates Fail

Based on our database of Alan interview outcomes, avoid these common traps:

  • Failing to articulate their specific actions and contributions.
  • Not demonstrating an understanding of what Alan does or its market position.
  • Inefficiently searching for accounts or transfers.
  • Focusing only on the positive outcome without discussing challenges or learnings.

Test Yourself: Real Alan Questions

Three real prompts pulled from our database.

Type · System Design

Design a system to process and categorize user spending from bank transaction data. Consider data ingestion, categorization logic (rule-based and potentially ML-based), storage, and how to serve this data to the frontend.

Type · Algorithm

Given a list of financial transactions (each with a timestamp, amount, and user ID), write a function to calculate the daily spending for each user. Handle potential duplicates and out-of-order timestamps.

Type · Past Experience

Tell me about a time you had to influence a senior stakeholder or a cross-functional team to adopt your product vision or strategy when they were initially resistant.

+ many more questions, signals, and worked examples

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Alan Interview Question Bank

A sample from our database, grouped by round. Sign up to see the full set.

9 of 21 questions shown

1

Recruiter Screen

1
  1. 1

    Type · Motivation

    Why are you interested in working at Alan, and what excites you about the fintech space specifically?
2

Coding Screen

3
  1. 2

    Type · Algorithm

    Given a list of financial transactions (each with a timestamp, amount, and user ID), write a function to calculate the daily spending for each user. Handle potential duplicates and out-of-order timestamps.
  2. 3

    Type · Algorithm

    Implement a function to detect potential fraudulent transactions. Given a list of transactions and a set of rules (e.g., transactions over $1000 from a new user within 24 hours), identify suspicious ones. Assume rules can be complex and dynamic.
  3. + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
3

System Design

4
  1. 4

    Type · System Design

    Design a system to process and categorize user spending from bank transaction data. Consider data ingestion, categorization logic (rule-based and potentially ML-based), storage, and how to serve this data to the frontend.
  2. 5

    Type · System Design

    Design a real-time notification system for users about significant account activity (e.g., large deposits, low balance alerts, potential fraud). How would you ensure low latency and high availability?
  3. + 2 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
4

Onsite Coding

4
  1. 6

    Type · Algorithm

    Write a function to calculate the moving average of a user's transaction amounts over a rolling window of N days. Optimize for scenarios where new transactions are added frequently.
  2. 7

    Type · Debugging

    A user reports that their spending summary for last month is incorrect. Here's a snippet of the relevant code and logs. Identify the bug and fix it.
  3. + 2 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
5

Behavioral / Leadership

9
  1. 8

    Type · Past Experience

    Tell me about a time you had to influence a senior stakeholder or a cross-functional team to adopt your product vision or strategy when they were initially resistant.
  2. 9

    Type · Conflict Resolution

    Tell me about a time you had a significant disagreement with a colleague or team member. How did you approach the situation, and what was the outcome?
  3. + 7 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)

Unlock the full Alan question bank

Free signup, no credit card. You get every question + the framework, grading signals, and worked answer for each.

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Interview tracks at Alan

How Alan's DNA translates across functions. Pick your role.

SWEs at Alan are evaluated on technical excellence, clean code, system design for scalable and secure health data platforms, and problem-solving. They seek engineers who can build reliable, user-friendly solutions within a complex, regulated health tech ecosystem, valuing collaboration and ownership.

System Design

Design a system to process and categorize user spending from bank transaction data. Consider data ingestion, categorization logic (rule-based and potentially ML-based), storage, and how to serve this data to the frontend.

Algorithm

Given a list of financial transactions (each with a timestamp, amount, and user ID), write a function to calculate the daily spending for each user. Handle potential duplicates and out-of-order timestamps.

+ 1 more

Unlock the Software Engineer grading rubric for Alan

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Compare Alan with other tech interviews

Same DNA, different bar. Browse the closest companies in our database and see how their loops differ.

Practice Alan interviews end-to-end

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