How would you handle a situation where a colleague was being very difficult to work with?

"In all honesty, any great work atmosphere that I've been a part of in the past has involved conflict between colleagues. In situations I have witnessed, conflict has stemmed from very open-minded people giving their two cents in particular situations and two people not seeing eye to eye. This happened recently to me in the planning phases of a new project. On of our UX Designers and I had a disagreement on the final layout of a new software roll out we were planning. It worked best for both of us to talk about our ideas and list the pro's and con's for our ideas. I kept an open mind to learn from her point of view and she did the same to me on my end. This led us to come up with a great compromise in the end."

In the team based atmosphere at GrubHub, departments with different skills and backgrounds can often see things from different points of view and these situations can cause some internal conflict between coworkers. With this question, your interviewer is looking to hear how you handle situations where you are working with someone that can be seen as difficult. To give them the sense that you are able to work through conflict in a professional and sensible manner, try to talk through how you handled a conflict at work previously in the past and highlight the interpersonal skills that you used to help make it a positive situation.

"Last year, we had a new engineer join our team that was hired on from his internship with us. From his first day, he made it very evident that he would only handle certain tasks within our team and only work on certain projects. As his mentor to help get him up and running, I sat him down and discussed the expectations of each of our engineers as part of our larger team. I explained to him that our approach was not to pigeonhole ourselves into smaller tasks, but rather be well rounded engineers that could handle any project and be able to cover for each other if needed. He really appreciated this approach when I explained the benefits for his long term career goals with this approach. This example shows my approach to being very direct with people that I have a conflict with in the workplace and doing so in a very professional and educational manner."

In a technical support role here at GrubHub, we expect that you would be able to bring great customer service skills to the role. Describe your customer service philosophy in the support that you would provide.

"To me, my job duties aren't fully satisfied if an end user leaves our conversation without a smile on their face. While any technical support specialist can handle the customer aspect of the job, few have the people skills to do so pleasantly for their customers. In any interaction that I have with a customer, I talk in a calm and boosting manner. If they are upset or mad about a situation, I reflectively listen and never place any blame back on them. By taking this approach, my customer surveys in my current position have been excellent for the three years I've held that role."

While your interviewer will be able to get great insight into your technical expertise during your interviewer, this one question will allow you the opportunity to describe how you will bring solid interpersonal skills to the role. Your interview knows that customers will rely on you to provide quick and sensible support for their needs, but the expectation to do that in a pleasing manner is of utmost importance. Talk from a high level about your feelings on why providing great service is important and give an example or two of ways that you have done that in the past.

"If hired for this role here at GrubHub, you'll quickly find that my mantra in working with customers is speed with a smile. To do this, I need to be resourceful in providing them with an answer or triaging them to the correct person. I need to be knowledgeable in our product base to give them answers with confidence. And last, but not least, I need to be positive in all interactions with them."

Our cloud computing at GrubHub requires our experts to take proper security measures in their work. What security measures are you familiar with utilizing in a cloud platform?

"For me, the planning stage of the cloud deployment process really sets the groundwork for security in a project. In my current role, each project adopts a cloud framework that suits the project the best. This framework is the base for our security measures in the cloud. From there, I always look to utilize a cloud service that encrypts our data and take all measures to steer away from storing sensitive information within the cloud. Last, as with any project, I help implement strict testing measures to check on the security of our cloud operations."

As with any server or database storage, unique security risks are posed to organizations that have moved their data and applications to the cloud. At GrubHub, part of your role will be to ensure that all security measures are in place with the organizations data in the cloud and your interviewer is looking to hear that you are familiar with diagnosing security risks and taking action to prevent them with this question. Talk about your knowledge of the different cloud service providers and other security measures that you are familiar with taking in your work.

"In my current role, the biggest security risks that we face are loss of sensitive data and malware infections. To take all security measures possible, our first plan of attack for security is to ensure that all of our data is backed up locally with electronic copies of data. To prevent malware in all ways possible, we have implemented a strict password strength policy and we install anti-virus software in our own equipment and recommend that customers do the same as well."

Do you consider yourself stronger in C++, C#, Java, or Python?

"In my last company, we had a bit of an outdated tech stack and used C# and .NET. I found myself fully immersed in those technologies, but had a strong desire to learn more and become more familiar with modern technologies and how I can apply that in my career. That's what has me so interested in this role. Over the last year, I've taken courses in Java and C++, which I noticed you prefer. I've become proficient in the skills and in side projects, applied my increasingly strong knowledge. I'm probably strongest professionally in C# as that has been where my experience lies, but my passion and dedication is on the Java and C++ side, as I feel that's the more modern alternative. I'm excited about the possibility of applying that knowledge in a role at GrubHub."

Before your interview, do some research to understand what tech stack GrubHub uses so you can best prepare and highlight your expertise. If you aren't as strong in one of the skills you feel is necessary, be sure to explain how you've used it and how you are growing your knowledge to become better. Be sure to be honest in your answer, as the company will likely test your strengths.

"I am motivated and excited about this new opportunity because it will challenge me to grow in my (X) skills. I love soccer and enjoy spending time with my teammates. I am interested in continuing my education by studying (Y) to further my career."

Would you say that you are a goal oriented on the job? What would I be able to do as your manager to help you achieve your goals if hired here at GrubHub?

"I would definitely say that I am goal oriented on the job in wanting to contribute any way that I can to the overall benefit of the organization. In my current organization, our leadership focuses on overall sales numbers at the end of the year. To help achieve these goals, our department creates our own goals to help achieve the sales numbers needed to succeed. Last year, one of those goals was to be as creative as possible in our user experience design processes. With the launch of an exciting new app midyear, sales numbers skyrocketed and our department was instrumental in that. For me, it was important that we determined our goals as a team with the final stamp of approval from our manager. While this style of management really helped motivate me, I can thrive under any management style as long as expectations and goals for my work are clearly set."

At the heart of this question lies your interviewers desire to see what motivates you as a potential employee at GrubHub. Make it clear to your interviewer that you certainly are motivated by on the job goals and do this by using an example of a time where you were motivated by and achieved a goal. Then, think deeply about the type of manager that you like to work for in terms of goal setting and helping our achieve your goals. Let your interviewer know what type of management styles you appreciate the most while being open to any style.

"For me, my day to day work is much more meaningful when I have goals to work for. In my current role, we have set timelines for our projects and this helps lay the framework for our goals. If hired for this position, my expectations of you as my manager would be to have goals clearly defined and a supportive atmosphere to be provided to work within."

What experience do you have in the different types of software maintenance?

"Being familiar with all four types of software maintenance, my most used method of maintenance in my current role is corrective. Based on bug reports from end users, I work through coding and logic issues to resolve issues in a timely and effective manner. In the maintenance I perform, I never hesitate to pick up the phone and contact customers to hear first hand about what they are experiencing. By doing this, they feel like they are an important part of the process and it reflects well on me and my organization."

As a reputable company, GrubHub takes their software maintenance processes seriously and your interviewer is looking to hear that you are familiar with the four different types of software maintenance. Talk to your interviewer about any work you have done in the past with corrective, adaptive, perfective and/or preventative software maintenance. Use specific examples and make sure that your interviewer walks away from your conversation knowing that you understand the importance of proper system maintenance.

"In my current role, I'd definitely say that a majority of the maintenance work that I do is adaptive maintenance. Working in banking software that is used around the globe, I help perform system maintenance for changes in currency on a pretty regular basis. This work requires research and talking with end users to help adapt the programs for their use. If hired here at GrubHub, I also have experience performing perfective, preventative and corrective maintenance on software as well."

In designing Android software, what is your experience using parcelable versus serializable within an app?

"Having written code for Android apps for many years now, I am very familiar with both serializable and parcelable methods. In my first hand experience, parcelable provides a much faster and better user experience so I will always strive to take the time to write custom code for marhsaling and unmarshaling to create less garbage objects within an app."

Because parcelable is optimized for Android to be faster and more customizable, your interviewer will be looking to hear that you are willing to put in the extra work to utilize the parcelable method to achieve better performance within the software that you design. Give your interviewer your thoughts on the differences between the two methods of passing object references to activities within an app that you design and make sure that they understand that you are ready to perform the work to utilize the parcelable method when necessary.

"Due to it being a standard Java interface and its ease of implementation, serializable interface is pretty commonly used. But, because it uses reflection, many temporary objects are created within Android apps and this creates a very poor user experience. When the parcelable interface was introduced for Android systems, I have extensively focused on its use and finished products have benefited greatly."

Give an example of a time that you used a universal design practice in your work as a UI or UX designer. Why was it important to do this?

"From a very high level, the business success of a program really relies on being universally designed. If we pigeon hole ourselves, a product will only reach a very limited group of end users. But taking that a step further, universal design is the morally right thing to do to help reach people that may not have access to the average program design. Last year, I was part of a project that utilized a voice user interface for users that were deaf or hard of hearing. This simple yet effective design was a huge win for our current customers and in helping drive new business with our groundbreaking software."

In the technology, software and mobile app fields today, accessibility is a huge topic. As a designer with GrubHub, you will be expected to help create products that are as accessible as possible to as many end users as possible. In this two part question, talk about why you feel that universal design is important in the work that you will be doing with GrubHub and then really sell your ability to do this by giving an example of a time you used a universal design in your previous work.

"Early in my career, the best piece of advice that I receive was from an experience designer and she said that when UX doesn't consider all potential users, we are no longer working on the user experience. We live in a very diverse world and the programs that I've designed for in the past have certainly had the goal to reach a wide audience. With your financial products here at GrubHub, this same philosophy applies. Last year, based on some feedback from current customers, we switched our design to include a strong color contract to make the system much more user friendly to color blind users. This was both a simple and very effective change to enhance the look of the program."

A huge part of our business here at GrubHub is designing software for iOS. In this role, how would you steer away from retain cycles when using closures in Swift programming language?

"Because ARC handles most of the memory knowledge in Swift, I know ARC is prone to memory leaking and this can cause major issues in apps over time. The fix that I've used in my career to avoid retain cycles is using weak references in my coding."

This question allows your interviewer to assess your technical knowledge and skills in designing apps for iOS products in a very simple way. To successfully answer it, make sure that you can speak knowledgeably about the swift programming language and using closures to capture and store references within the software. To piece together everything for your interviewer, give a clear understanding of why retain cycles must be avoided in your processing.

What do you feel is one of the top issues that is faced by data engineers today?

"Over the past couple of years, I've come to realize that one of the largest issues we face as data engineers is the large amounts of data that are needed to store and then draw information from. Here at GrubHub, I can only imagine how big of an issue that is in the healthcare industry. I have a lot of experience with cloud based data storage and also server based storage."

Being in the midst of the greatest technological revolution in the history of man, data engineers face many difficult issues in the work that they perform on a daily basis. While there are many directions that you can go with this question, be sure to focus your answer on something that you can speak passionately about. If you can research a common issue in the industry that GrubHub works in, you may likely score some bonus points with your interviewer.

"In my recent experiences, continuous, real-time integration is an issue that we will face each and every day moving forward. The need for fast paced information is certainly to blame for this. To stay on top of the continuous integration landscape, I am happy to hear that new and improved systems are being created to stay more real-time and up to the minute. Here at GrubHub and working in the financial industry, how have you seen this need for real-time data impact your products?"

If hired for this position here at GrubHub, would you be comfortable handling overall project manager responsibilities for new software development?

"Looking to join the team here at GrubHub directly out of college, I feel very confident in my abilities to manage the entire scope of a new development project. I have leadership experience as my campus' president of the software engineering club. In that role, I developed skills that would help me utilize staff and resources in the best way possible. During my internship, I was exposed to the planning stages of new projects and I have a very good feel of estimating the budget and length of time needed to have a fully functional system."

As a skilled software engineer, you have all of the necessary tools in your bag to be a successful engineer at GrubHub. This question is allowing your interviewer to get a better sense of your project management skills and people skills if you were to join the team at GrubHub. In your answer, talk about your ability to estimate the time and cost of a project, the staffing needed and the overall scope of planning for a particular project. If you have direct experience in being the lead on a large development project, be sure to discuss that experience with your interviewer.

"I would absolutely be comfortable if tasked with project manager duties here at GrubHub. In my last two roles, I have led successful projects that started with great planning and budgeting process and went through to completion with great people and processes in place under my leadership. While it's not a regular duty for me in my current role, I always welcome leadership duties."

At GrubHub, we rely on a full team effort to deliver top quality products to our customers. Tell me about a time that you worked well as part of a team. Are you comfortable in a similar role here?

"Throughout my career, I've always enjoyed working as part of a larger team on the job and this personal enjoyment started with my love of and participation in team sports like baseball and basketball. Growing up playing sports, I learned that each team member brought a unique skill set that could help us achieve our goals. Through a great coaching staff that knew how to make these individual skills shine, this same philosophy holds true for a team that is looking to design a new software system. I know that my skills as an engineer are just part of the final product and I work very well with designers, architects, analysts and sales to help build the greatest system possible."

While this potential role with GrubHub will require your to be an independent worker that can think on your feet, you will also need to work as part of a larger team that is working toward one common goal. Because of this fact, your interviewer will want to hear that you thrive in an environment where you work with team members from other disciplines than you are trained in. In your example, stress to your interviewer that you have excellent communication skills and that you fully understand that every person on a team plays a vital role in the organization's success.

"I am a people person by nature and my current role has me working very closely with our engineering and design staff on writing technical manuals for our products. While I certainly can handle long days at my computer in solitude, my desire to work hand in hand with others really sets me apart from my peers in this field. I have excellent verbal, listening and written communication skills that, if hired here at GrubHub, your entire team would appreciate from my first day on the job."

Talk about your previous user interface design experience in detail. Why do you feel that this experience will translate well to this role with GrubHub?

"Ten years into my career out of college, I consider myself very blessed to have such a well rounded background in user interface design. I have experience designing cutting edge mobile app designs, website design, video game design and software design. Here at GrubHub, your education software would greatly benefit from my creative designs to be user friendly and appealing to educators, parents and students and I'd love to bring these skills to work for you."

While your interviewer can get a good sense of your experience from your resume, they are looking for you to talk in details about your experiences in UI design in your previous work. While explaining your previous experience, be sure to highlight the skills that you developed that will help you be successful in designing new products with GrubHub. Prior to your interview, be sure you research and are family with the products that GrubHub puts out.

"While my experience in user interface design has really focused on web design over the past five years, I think my current skill set will benefit the team here at GrubHub greatly. In my web design, I prepare mockups and wireframes for customers and have experience utilizing a lot of different resources in doing these. In the software world, I would love to use these same principles. As well, my web experience has really driven me to be user focused. In this role, a more user focused drive is required out of your user interface design and I would be able to bring that to the team here."

What do you know about our products and how do you think you'll be able to handle a support role surrounding them?

"One of the main things that is attracting me to a position with GrubHub will be the new opportunity to work solely with cloud based software. With my current experience in supporting server and data storage issues, I am confident in my ability to support the services here based on that experience."

This question allows your interviewer to gain insight into both your interest in this position and the skills that you will be able to bring to the table. To show your interest, be sure to do as much research on GrubHub as possible and get to know their products. Ensuring that you know the job description from front to back is important as well. Then, talk about how you feel that your skills will apply to working with end users that are contacting about the software.

"Upon reading the job description for technical application support, it was easy for me to see that my skills were a perfect match for the position. It sounds like you are looking for an expert that can provide support on GlobalLink applications and has exceptional experience across many different scripting languages. As you can see from my resume, I have experience using Perl and Python and I feel like these experiences would help make a smooth transition for me into this role. On top of that, my cloud based experience would translate nicely to this role here at GrubHub as well."

What do you see as the top benefits of moving to a cloud based computing platform?

"Over the past couple of years in my current position, we have greatly benefited from the vast amount of testing and staging servers that available on the cloud. In developing new programs, our testing and delivery has greatly increased our team's productivity to new levels. Add on the simple cost savings of the cloud and a move to the cloud was a no brainer for us in the end. If hired for this role here at GrubHub, I'd be able to bring new cloud computing ideas to your team from day one on the job."

While cloud based computing has certainly had its positive impacts across many different industries, the field of software and technology development has its own unique benefits. For this question, your interviewer will be looking to hear that you understand just how a cloud based platform benefits the field. In your answer, focus on resources that impact both the work that the team at GrubHub performs and the end users of the software.

"As with any of the work that I have done in this field, I focus on the consumer and the benefits that they can reap from my work. In the cloud, updates to existing software are made available almost instantaneously and end users have access to those updates with the simple click of a button. Rewind to years prior, these software updates took time and manpower that are almost unthinkable by today's standards."

If you were asked to review a colleague's code that they had written, what key things would you look for?

"As an experienced software engineer, I fully expect my colleagues to reach out to me for my insight and I never hesitate to provide open and honest feedback. When asked to do this, my main focus is ensuring that the code is readable and functional. If there are lines of code that need to be removed, I don't hesitate to let my colleague know that while also giving them feedback on why I feel it is unnecessary."

For this question, your interviewer will obviously be looking to hear that you have adequate knowledge when it comes to coding processes. But most importantly, your interviewer will be looking to gauge your ability to be a team player and focus on the bigger picture when working on a project. In your answer, focus on your attention to detail and your ability to help others when needed.

"When I'm asked to do this in my current position, my main focus is on regulatory requirements that were put in place for the project and security issues. I work with a team of great engineers that are very efficient coders and these two areas are most often overlooked."

What programming languages would you consider yourself fluent in?

"From the start of college, where software engineering grew into a passion for me, I've become very fluent in Java, JavaScript and C++. My current role has me working primarily with C++, but I pride myself on my ability and passion to learn new programming languages and would be able to do so if hired for this role with GrubHub."

While this question gives your interviewer insight into the diversity of your programming language experience, they most importantly want to know that you are adaptable and able to learn on the fly if needed. Talk about the different languages that you consider yourself fluent in and, if possible, do as much research into GrubHub as you can prior to your interview and try to speak to the specific languages that they work with.

"During my training to be an engineer and then in my current role since graduating, a majority of my experience falls within Python. My current role delves deeply into artificial intelligence and Python is awesome with this advanced technology. As I understand it from talking to another engineer here at GrubHub, a requirement would be for me to learn Scala. Though I haven't worked directly with Scala, I believe my experience and willingness to learn would have me up and running in no time if hired for this role."

The next cloud engineer that we hire here at GrubHub needs to be able build a system that can handle a high amount of traffic. How would you test our system's ability to handle large amounts of traffic?

"Cloud computing has certainly revolutionized the storage of high amounts of data and a key piece that cloud based systems bring to the table are their elasticity for handling large amounts of traffic. I see my job as building a cloud based system to scale horizontally to be able to handle the most data and traffic possible. To test systems, I've used a few different tools that were all very accurate prior to go-live."

This question allows your interviewer to gain insight into your thought process and ability surrounding building a cloud network that has an architecture that can handle large amounts of traffic without failure. Some key points to focus on your answer are your ability to match capacity to system demand and use horizontal scaling in the design of the system.

"In my current position as a cloud engineer, I have utilized internet scale services like Amazon S3 and Elastic Load Balancing to ensure that our cloud systems could handle large volume that fluctuate seasonally. Because of the great functionality of the internet scale services, internal testing wasn't necessary as we knew we were in good hands through those services."

Can you describe the software development lifecycle?

"Absolutely. In my last job, we leveraged the waterfall method, making sure we completed each phase of the project - and completed it on time and to the highest quality, before moving on. The software development lifecycle consists of 6 steps, starting with planning, of course, followed by implementation, testing, documentation, deployment, and maintenance. Every step is crucial to ensure we're producing a quality product and also maintaining that product to meet the changing needs and demands of our end users."

With this question, employers are looking to test your knowledge. They want to know how much you've participated in the projects you've been involved in to truly understand the software development lifecycle. The question may seem basic to some, but employers are expecting an accurate answer to know that they're hiring a true pro.

"I am new to my career in financial services and sales; however, I have taken an online course focused on cold calling. This course was incredibly helpful and I look forward to meeting and exceeding my targets with GrubHub."

Do you have experience working with different CASE tools? If so, what do you have experience with?

"In my current role, I regularly utilize both diagramming and web development tools. The diagram tools assist our software projects by outlining the system data and components in a graphical form for us and this saves us a great amount of time while also being very reliable. The web development tools greatly help me visualize site changes that I am making because I don't have a deep background in web development. If hired for this position, I'd look forward to learning other CASE tools for prototyping, quality assurance and maintenance."

The world of software engineering has greatly benefited from advancements in computer aided software engineering tools. Because GrubHub is at the forefront of the industry, your interviewer will be looking to hear which tools you have experience with. Make sure not to concern yourself with providing a correct answer here, but rather focus on your flexibility to learn new aides when needed while explaining what you have experience with.

"During my career and in my experience with CASE tools, most of my experience is in the lower CASE elements that focus on coding and testing the software after initial development. CASE tools have certainly made life as a software engineer more efficient and effective and I'd look forward to learn any new CASE tools if hired for this position here at GrubHub."

GrubHub embraces an Agile environment. Explain your experience in Agile methodologies and why you think it is important.

"The majority of my experience has been in an Agile environment. For ten years I have been personally responsible for leading agile teams, and I have helped define team goals and milestones. This approach is important to me as I see how Agile methodology helps employees deliver better products in less time. In my current role, team productivity increased by 34% once we introduced an Agile environment, and our on-time project rate skyrocketed another 18%."

The interviewer would like to understand the depth of your knowledge in Agile. The interviewer would also like to know if you work well with team collaboration, are responsive to stakeholder needs, and can work well with team defined milestones. Give a specific example of your experience.

"I especially want to work for GrubHub because I have friends who have worked here before with really positive feedback on their experiences. I am looking for a positive work environment where I can stay for a long time to come."

If hired here at GrubHub to develop iOS and Android software, when would you use a fragment rather than an activity?

"As a best practice in my development of Android apps in the past, activities are really the complete screen that a user experiences as part of the app. Fragments are really small sub activities that take place within the activity. Because fragments within an app have their own life cycle and receive their own input events within the app, there are specific times where fragments make the most sense to use in development. In my experience, I always use fragments when the app is working with UI components that are going to be uses across multiple activities within the app. As well, fragments have also served very well when using swipe views within the app."

In the development of apps for both iOS and Android, using code to create an activity versus a fragment is a highly debated topic to this day. For this question, your interviewer is looking to hear that you understand what the differences between the two are and when you feel that using a fragment is the proper direction to go. Make sure to speak to the high level overview of what an activity does to an app versus fragments.

"In the past year, I honestly don't recall designing a new app that ran solely on an activity alone. The fragments are almost necessary today to bring life to an app. I use retained fragments to persist across activity restarts within the app and this helps make a user friendly experience for our end users."

Here at GrubHub, we ask our test engineers to follow specific QA protocols. What role do you feel QA plays in software development and testing?

"As a test engineer, I take great pride in my role of ensuring that systems go out to consumers as error free as possible. In my current role, I take the time to learn all of the system specifications that are laid out by our design engineers and customize my testing to follow those specifications."

As an experience software testing engineer, quality assurance should be ingrained in your brain and your interviewer is looking to get a sense of your personal feelings towards it in your work with this question. In your answer, be sure to highlight QA's importance in reducing errors, maintaining specifications, testing failure parameters and preventing defects from occurring. In the end, make sure that quality is your mantra in the eyes of your interviewer by giving an example or two of how you put QA in the forefront of your work.

"In my work throughout my career, quality assurance in my testing was an every minute of every day job on my part. While creating effective testing processes on new software is extremely important in following QA protocols, the recording of defects, issuing of reports and assisting the designers on fixing issues are equally important parts of the process that I'd love to let shine here at GrubHub."

What unique values can you bring to GrubHub in your user experience design skills?

"I have really taken pride in my ability to add value to the business needs of the customers that I work with. During any design project, I take the time to work with end users to find their wants and needs out of the program. Then, as I create the UX design, I keep their needs at the forefront and do anything possible to exceed their expectations."

While your interviewer has shown confidence in your technical abilities to succeed at GrubHub as a UX designer, this question is helping them gain insight into your ability to see the big picture in the work that you do. As you think about the unique personal values that you would bring to the role, try and paint a picture of your work tying to the end user and how you can help make it more productive, enjoyable and satisfying for them.

"As you can see from my resume, I have formal training and experience in user experience research and I know that this would benefit the work that I would be doing here at GrubHub if hired for this position. I pursued this additional training in my career because of my passion for the customer journey in the programs that I design."

In SQL, how do you explain the differences between clustered and non-clustered indexes? Can you name a time that you used each?

"In the simplest of terms, a clustered index order records in a table the way that they are physically stored. There can only be one clustered index per table. Non-clustered indexes do not store data to match the physical order that it is stored. Rather, it can hold up to 249 indexes per table. Both types come with their own benefits over the other. In my experience, clustered indexes are suited best for programs that use primary key as an identity integer column. On the other hand, non-clustered make the most sense for programs that need JOIN and WHERE clauses within them."

GrubHub uses indexes to improve query performances within their software and for this question, your interviewer is looking to hear that you have a basic understanding of both clustered and non-clustered indexes. Explain the differences between the two types of indexes and be sure you can either speak to relevant times that you've used each or when would be the appropriate application to use each.

"In my experience, clustered indexes are faster to read but very slow when it comes to update data within. Non-clustered indexes are just the opposite in that they are slower to read but much fast to insert new data into them. In my current role, I mostly use clustered indexes when large numbers of rows need to be retreived and when insert operations are important. Most other times, I will use non-clustered as the standard."

If hired here at GrubHub, what do you feel would be the biggest hurdle for you to overcome from the start?

"As you can see from my resume, I don't have any direct working experience with the financial industry and I would see that as my largest learning opportunity if offered this position. Like I did with my current job in the healthcare industry, I would take the time to learn the basics of the industry that would help me design the most intuitive user interfaces in the products here at GrubHub."

The key to answering this question with confidence starts with understanding that you are interviewing with GrubHub because your interviewer feels that you are a strong candidate for this position. What your interviewer is focusing on with this question is how they could be of most help to you if hired for the job. So, take the time prior to your interview to think about an aspect of the position that would be the most difficult for you to overcome to be up and running at full speed and then take time to explain how you would plan to overcome that hurdle if hired. This structured answer will tell your interviewer that you have put thought to your potential shortcoming with a plan of action.

"Being a team player by nature, I've always considered my first challenge at any new company to be the task of getting to know my colleagues, their work preferences and their work styles. In the same breath, I want them to know who I am and how I best work as part of a team with them. To accomplish this, I would take the initiative to set one on one meetings with individuals that I didn't get to touch base with during my orientation process to get to know them better."

In your current work, what are the important steps you take in the data validation process?

"As I embark on a data validation process in my current role, my first step is to roadmap a detailed plan to keep on task. I utilize benchmarks and the expectations of key stakeholders as my guide. Once underway, I validate the database and the data formatting to ensure that data is properly screened for its overall health. Then, by finishing with sampling, tests are performed to hopefully show that the data is useful within the system."

Depending on your training and your past roles prior to interviewing at GrubHub, you may be familiar with one or two of the many trains of though regarding the steps of a data validation. Whatever formal process you are familiar with, be sure to check the boxes of discussing data screening and data verification as part of your process. Your interviewer will be looking to hear that you check those boxes as they are imperative in the software field.

"The most important steps in a data validation process are determining the data to sample, scouring the existing database and validating the final data format. My first step is to use my best judgment to determine if I will validate a sample or the entire data set. This determination is based on overall size of the set and the timeframe that I have to work on the project. Then, I take the time to screen data in the existing database to calculate the number of unique ID's and records to come into the system. Last, I have to verify that the source data matches the schema within the targe"

GrubHub Interview Questions

Go Back

1. How would you handle a situation where a colleague was being very difficult to work with?
2. In a technical support role here at GrubHub, we expect that you would be able to bring great customer service skills to the role. Describe your customer service philosophy in the support that you would provide.
3. Our cloud computing at GrubHub requires our experts to take proper security measures in their work. What security measures are you familiar with utilizing in a cloud platform?
4. Do you consider yourself stronger in C++, C#, Java, or Python?
5. Would you say that you are a goal oriented on the job? What would I be able to do as your manager to help you achieve your goals if hired here at GrubHub?
6. What experience do you have in the different types of software maintenance?
7. In designing Android software, what is your experience using parcelable versus serializable within an app?
8. Give an example of a time that you used a universal design practice in your work as a UI or UX designer. Why was it important to do this?
9. A huge part of our business here at GrubHub is designing software for iOS. In this role, how would you steer away from retain cycles when using closures in Swift programming language?
10. What do you feel is one of the top issues that is faced by data engineers today?
11. If hired for this position here at GrubHub, would you be comfortable handling overall project manager responsibilities for new software development?
12. At GrubHub, we rely on a full team effort to deliver top quality products to our customers. Tell me about a time that you worked well as part of a team. Are you comfortable in a similar role here?
13. Talk about your previous user interface design experience in detail. Why do you feel that this experience will translate well to this role with GrubHub?
14. What do you know about our products and how do you think you'll be able to handle a support role surrounding them?
15. What do you see as the top benefits of moving to a cloud based computing platform?
16. If you were asked to review a colleague's code that they had written, what key things would you look for?
17. What programming languages would you consider yourself fluent in?
18. The next cloud engineer that we hire here at GrubHub needs to be able build a system that can handle a high amount of traffic. How would you test our system's ability to handle large amounts of traffic?
19. Can you describe the software development lifecycle?
20. Do you have experience working with different CASE tools? If so, what do you have experience with?
21. GrubHub embraces an Agile environment. Explain your experience in Agile methodologies and why you think it is important.
22. If hired here at GrubHub to develop iOS and Android software, when would you use a fragment rather than an activity?
23. Here at GrubHub, we ask our test engineers to follow specific QA protocols. What role do you feel QA plays in software development and testing?
24. What unique values can you bring to GrubHub in your user experience design skills?
25. In SQL, how do you explain the differences between clustered and non-clustered indexes? Can you name a time that you used each?
26. If hired here at GrubHub, what do you feel would be the biggest hurdle for you to overcome from the start?
27. In your current work, what are the important steps you take in the data validation process?

GrubHub Interview Questions

1. How would you handle a situation where a colleague was being very difficult to work with?

2. In a technical support role here at GrubHub, we expect that you would be able to bring great customer service skills to the role. Describe your customer service philosophy in the support that you would provide.

3. Our cloud computing at GrubHub requires our experts to take proper security measures in their work. What security measures are you familiar with utilizing in a cloud platform?

4. Do you consider yourself stronger in C++, C#, Java, or Python?

5. Would you say that you are a goal oriented on the job? What would I be able to do as your manager to help you achieve your goals if hired here at GrubHub?

6. What experience do you have in the different types of software maintenance?

7. In designing Android software, what is your experience using parcelable versus serializable within an app?

8. Give an example of a time that you used a universal design practice in your work as a UI or UX designer. Why was it important to do this?

9. A huge part of our business here at GrubHub is designing software for iOS. In this role, how would you steer away from retain cycles when using closures in Swift programming language?

10. What do you feel is one of the top issues that is faced by data engineers today?

11. If hired for this position here at GrubHub, would you be comfortable handling overall project manager responsibilities for new software development?

12. At GrubHub, we rely on a full team effort to deliver top quality products to our customers. Tell me about a time that you worked well as part of a team. Are you comfortable in a similar role here?

13. Talk about your previous user interface design experience in detail. Why do you feel that this experience will translate well to this role with GrubHub?

14. What do you know about our products and how do you think you'll be able to handle a support role surrounding them?

15. What do you see as the top benefits of moving to a cloud based computing platform?

16. If you were asked to review a colleague's code that they had written, what key things would you look for?

17. What programming languages would you consider yourself fluent in?

18. The next cloud engineer that we hire here at GrubHub needs to be able build a system that can handle a high amount of traffic. How would you test our system's ability to handle large amounts of traffic?

19. Can you describe the software development lifecycle?

20. Do you have experience working with different CASE tools? If so, what do you have experience with?

21. GrubHub embraces an Agile environment. Explain your experience in Agile methodologies and why you think it is important.

22. If hired here at GrubHub to develop iOS and Android software, when would you use a fragment rather than an activity?

23. Here at GrubHub, we ask our test engineers to follow specific QA protocols. What role do you feel QA plays in software development and testing?

24. What unique values can you bring to GrubHub in your user experience design skills?

25. In SQL, how do you explain the differences between clustered and non-clustered indexes? Can you name a time that you used each?

26. If hired here at GrubHub, what do you feel would be the biggest hurdle for you to overcome from the start?

27. In your current work, what are the important steps you take in the data validation process?