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.
Growth · Software Engineer Interview Guide
Applies via LeverHeadquartered in FranceInterview language: French
How to Pass the Alan Software Engineer Interview in 2026
The Alan DNA (TL;DR)
The 'Vision Alignment' interview at Alan heavily weights a candidate's ability to articulate how their work directly contributes to the company's mission of simplifying health finance, often requiring examples of quantifiable impact on user experience or operational efficiency.
The Alan Interview Loop
Your onsite loop will typically consist of 5 rounds.
- 1
Round 1
Recruiter ScreenMotivation, role fit, logistics. - 2
Round 2
Coding ScreenLeetCode-medium algorithmic problems under time pressure. - 3
Round 3
System DesignDistributed systems, trade-offs at scale, architecture under constraints. - 4
Round 4
Onsite CodingLeetCode-hard, debugging, code clarity, edge cases. - 5
Round 5
Behavioral / LeadershipPast 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:
- Focusing only on the technical aspects without mentioning Alan's mission or product.
- Over-prioritizing technical perfection at the expense of member needs
- Inefficiently checking rules against each transaction.
- Incorrectly aggregating amounts for the same user on the same day.
Test Yourself: Real Alan Questions
Three real prompts pulled from our database.
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.
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.
+ 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 15 questions shown
1
Recruiter Screen
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- 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. - 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. - + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
3
System Design
4- 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. - 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? - + 2 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
4
Onsite Coding
4- 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. - 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. - + 2 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
5
Behavioral / Leadership
3- 8
Type · Ownership
At Alan, we prioritize extreme transparency in health insurance costs. Tell me about a time you identified a technical debt or a data quality issue that was negatively impacting the user experience of our health finance products and decided to fix it without being explicitly tasked to do so. How did you balance the immediate fix with the long-term reliability of our insurance processing engines? - 9
Type · Collaboration
When building features that touch our core health insurance billing or reimbursement systems, technical trade-offs between speed-to-market and regulatory compliance are inevitable. Describe a time you had to align with a product manager or a domain expert on a complex constraint where your technical perspective differed from their business goal. How did you reach a consensus that protected our system integrity while still delivering value to our members? - + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
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Interview tracks at Alan
How Alan's DNA translates across functions. Pick your role.
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Practice Alan interviews end-to-end
Alan Mock Interview
Run a live mock interview with our AI interviewer using Alan-style prompts. Get scored on structure, signal, and answer length - exactly how the real loop grades you.
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STAR Stories for Alan Behavioral Rounds
Build a Story Bank of your past wins, mapped to the leadership signals Alan interviewers grade on. Reuse them across every behavioral round.
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Alan Interview Prep Hub
The frameworks behind every Alan round: CIRCLES for product sense, hypothesis-driven debugging for analytical, STAR for behavioral. Learn each one in 10 minutes.
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Interview Frameworks
CIRCLES, STAR, AARRR, RICE, MECE. The exact frameworks that make Alan interviewers nod instead of frown. Step-by-step playbooks with the moves and the pitfalls.
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Sample answers
What a strong answer to these Alan interview questions shows.
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.
A strong answer shows: Understanding of distributed systems principles.; Ability to design scalable and reliable systems.; Consideration of different data storage and processing technologies.; Awareness of trade-offs (consistency vs. availability, cost vs. performance)..
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.
A strong answer shows: Ability to model and implement business logic.; Consideration for performance with potentially large datasets.; Designing for extensibility (dynamic rules)..
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