Other roles at Zama:Software EngineerProduct ManagerSalesSolutions Architect
Zama logo

Growth · Software Engineer Interview Guide

Headquartered in France

Interview language: English

How to Pass the Zama Software Engineer Interview in 2026

The Zama DNA (TL;DR)

Zama's 'We the Cypherpunks' ethos shapes their hiring, seeking individuals who deeply grasp privacy-preserving tech. They assess a candidate's ability to innovate within Fully Homomorphic Encryption, demonstrating rigorous technical foundations and a commitment to secure, decentralized systems.
Interviews inRustPythonC++

The Zama Interview Loop

Your onsite loop will typically consist of 4 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 Zama interview outcomes, avoid these common traps:

  • Claiming to learn instantly without challenges.
  • Not having a structured learning approach.
  • Focusing on a solution that is not scalable for other developers
  • Focusing only on theoretical learning without practical application.

Test Yourself: Real Zama Questions

Three real prompts pulled from our database.

Type · Data Structures

Given a list of user authentication events (timestamp, user_id, event_type), write a function to find all users who logged in within 5 minutes of each other. Assume timestamps are sorted.

Type · Array Processing

Given an array of Zama feature flags (each with an ID, name, and status: 'enabled', 'disabled', 'rollout'), write a function to count the number of features currently enabled for a specific user, considering potential rollout percentages.

Type · Algorithm

Implement a function to calculate the churn rate for Zama's subscription service. Given a list of subscription start and end dates, calculate the percentage of subscriptions that ended within a given month.

+ many more questions, signals, and worked examples

Sign up to unlock the full Zama grading rubric

Unlock the Zama rubric, free

Zama Interview Question Bank

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

9 of 13 questions shown

1

Recruiter Screen

1
  1. 1

    Type · Motivation

    Why are you interested in Zama, and what specifically about our mission and the SWE role here excites you?
2

Coding Screen

3
  1. 2

    Type · Data Structures

    Given a list of user authentication events (timestamp, user_id, event_type), write a function to find all users who logged in within 5 minutes of each other. Assume timestamps are sorted.
  2. 3

    Type · String Manipulation

    Implement a function that takes a Zama product description string and returns a new string with all occurrences of 'beta' (case-insensitive) replaced with 'early access'.
  3. + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
3

System Design

3
  1. 4

    Type · API Design

    Design an API endpoint for Zama that allows clients to retrieve a paginated list of their active subscriptions. Consider filtering, sorting, and error handling.
  2. 5

    Type · Scalability

    Zama is experiencing a surge in user sign-ups. How would you scale the user registration service to handle 10x the current load while maintaining low latency?
  3. + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
4

Onsite Coding

3
  1. 6

    Type · Algorithm

    Implement a function to calculate the churn rate for Zama's subscription service. Given a list of subscription start and end dates, calculate the percentage of subscriptions that ended within a given month.
  2. 7

    Type · Debugging

    A Zama dashboard is showing incorrect user counts. Here's a simplified version of the data processing code. Find and fix the bug.
  3. + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
5

Behavioral / Leadership

3
  1. 8

    Type · Conflict Resolution

    Fully Homomorphic Encryption often requires balancing extreme performance constraints against cryptographic security guarantees. Tell me about a time you had to advocate for a specific technical path when your team was split between optimizing for latency or maximizing security depth. How did you reconcile these competing engineering priorities?
  2. 9

    Type · Ownership

    At Zama, we often build tooling for developers to implement privacy-preserving applications where the abstraction layer is still evolving. Describe a situation where you identified a significant gap in our developer experience or library usability that was preventing wider adoption of our FHE tools. What steps did you take to bridge this gap and ensure the solution was maintainable?
  3. + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)

Unlock all 13 Zama questions, free

No credit card. Every question with its framework, the grading signals interviewers score against, and a worked answer for each.

Unlock all 13 Zama questions

Interview tracks at Zama

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

See Software Engineer salaries by country

Compare Zama with similar employers

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

Cosmico logo
4 rounds

Cosmico

Same tier

Cosmico's 'Why Cosmico Il' principle drives their evaluation, seeking candidates who clearly articulate the impact of...

See Cosmico interview questions

Choco logo
5 rounds

Choco

Same tier

The 'What is best for Choco' principle guides hiring, assessing candidates' ability to drive impact towards reducing ...

See Choco interview questions

Tacto logo
4 rounds

Tacto

Same tier

Tacto assesses how candidates can drive product adoption and user engagement, focusing on their ability to translate ...

See Tacto interview questions

Practice Zama interviews end-to-end

Zama Mock Interview

Run a live mock interview with our AI interviewer using Zama-style prompts. Get scored on structure, signal, and answer length - exactly how the real loop grades you.

Open

STAR Stories for Zama Behavioral Rounds

Build a Story Bank of your past wins, mapped to the leadership signals Zama interviewers grade on. Reuse them across every behavioral round.

Open

Zama Interview Prep Hub

The frameworks behind every Zama round: CIRCLES for product sense, hypothesis-driven debugging for analytical, STAR for behavioral. Learn each one in 10 minutes.

Open

Interview Frameworks

CIRCLES, STAR, AARRR, RICE, MECE. The exact frameworks that make Zama interviewers nod instead of frown. Step-by-step playbooks with the moves and the pitfalls.

Open

Sample answers

What a strong answer to these Zama interview questions shows.

Given a list of user authentication events (timestamp, user_id, event_type), write a function to find all users who logged in within 5 minutes of each other. Assume timestamps are sorted.

A strong answer shows: Efficient time complexity.; Correct handling of time intervals.; Clean and readable code..

Given an array of Zama feature flags (each with an ID, name, and status: 'enabled', 'disabled', 'rollout'), write a function to count the number of features currently enabled for a specific user, considering potential rollout percentages.

A strong answer shows: Accurate implementation of rollout logic.; Handling of different feature flag statuses.; Efficient calculation..

Frequently asked questions

WorkfiveExplore careers on Workfive →

Unlock the free Zama interview guide

Sign up