GitHub, owned by Microsoft since 2018, hosts code for much of the software industry and builds Actions, Codespaces and Copilot. Its engineering blog describes a take-home exercise submitted as a pull request, and candidates often report a code-review round afterward. This page covers what GitHub builds and who it hires, the process candidates commonly report, the technical depth the teams care about, representative problem types, what interviewers score, and a three-week prep plan.
What GitHub builds and who it hires
GitHub's engineers build the main web application, which its engineering blog describes as a large Ruby on Rails monolith backed by MySQL, plus Git storage infrastructure, GitHub Actions, Codespaces, the REST and GraphQL APIs, mobile apps and Copilot. GitHub describes itself as remote-first.
- Product engineers: Rails features on github.com.
- Infrastructure engineers: Git storage, databases and Kubernetes.
- Actions and Codespaces engineers: running developer workloads safely on shared machines.
- Front-end and Copilot engineers: React, TypeScript and AI features.
What the process tends to look like
| Stage | What happens | How to prepare |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiter call | Role, team, level and your preferred language | Know which team owns what you would work on |
| Take-home exercise | Per GitHub's 2022 blog post, an app called Interview-bot creates a repository with the exercise, a timer starts, and you submit a pull request that is anonymized and reviewed by engineers for your language against a scorecard | Small commits, a clear description and passing tests |
| Pull-request review | Candidates report reviewing an unfamiliar pull request, sometimes in Ruby or Rails | Practice reviewing code you did not write |
| Final loop | System design, behavioral interviews and a hiring-manager conversation | One developer-platform design and two strong stories |
Processes differ by team, level and office and change over time, so treat this as the common shape candidates report and confirm the specifics with your recruiter.
Pull requests, code review and developer platforms
The take-home. Because the submission is a pull request, treat it like real work: focused commits, a clear description, tests that pass in the provided automation, and a note on what you would do with more time. Our take-home assignment guide has more.
Reviewing unfamiliar code. Candidates describe a round where you review someone else's pull request in a codebase you have never seen. Read the description first, find the riskiest change, and separate blocking problems from style suggestions.
Developer platforms at scale. Design questions may touch on GitHub's own problems: webhook delivery for millions of repositories, background jobs, code search, and running CI jobs safely on shared machines. Our Ruby on Rails interview questions help if the review is in Rails.
Representative problem types
These are the kinds of problems candidates describe, not a leaked question list. Practice the category, not the exact question.
- Build a small API endpoint with tests in your chosen language.
- Review a pull request and find a bug and a missing test.
- Design webhook delivery with retries for many subscribers.
- Design a job queue that runs CI workflows.
- Compute a line diff between two versions of a file.
- Rate-limit API requests per token.
- Medium algorithm problems.
What interviewers score
- Working code: a solution that runs, handles edge cases and is readable by the next engineer.
- Practical judgment: the trade-offs you name and the simplest design that meets the requirement.
- Product sense: understanding who the user is and what failure looks like for them.
- Ownership: examples where you shipped, measured and fixed things yourself.
The behavioral side
Technical rounds decide most outcomes, but every GitHub loop also asks about how you work. Prepare a short story for each of these, with a result and what you learned:
- Something you shipped end to end. Cover the user problem, your decisions, what you measured and what you would change.
- A disagreement with a teammate. Show how you made the decision on evidence and kept the relationship.
- Why this company? Connect its product and engineering problems to the work you want to do next.
Structures and sample answers for the common questions are in our software engineer behavioral answers guide.
A three-week prep plan
- Week 1: practical coding: build small features against an API, parse and transform data, and write tests, in the language you will interview in.
- Week 2: system design for the company's domain, plus two behavioral stories about shipping and fixing something under pressure.
- Week 3: timed mixed problems, a mock interview every other day, and research into the product and its engineering blog.
For practice lists, use LeetCode company-tagged questions and the NeetCode 150 roadmap; for design rounds, read system design building blocks; and compare the practical style of Datadog.
Where CoPilot Interview fits
Most of a GitHub loop is spoken: you explain an approach, defend a trade-off and talk through your past work. CoPilot Interview is an AI interview assistant whose free AI mock interview builds technical and behavioral questions from your résumé and the job description, reads them aloud and scores each spoken answer out of ten, so you can rehearse the explanation as well as the code. The free plan gives 15 minutes a day of live help in sessions of up to 15 minutes, with AI mock interviews included. Online assessments and many coding rounds forbid outside help, so practice beforehand and follow your employer's rules on the day.
Disclosure: CoPilot Interview is our product, so weigh what we say about it accordingly.
Frequently asked questions
What programming language should I use in a GitHub interview?
You choose the take-home language from those GitHub supports. Ruby and Rails come up often in later review rounds, so refresh Ruby basics even if you write the take-home in Go or another language.
Does GitHub send an online assessment?
Instead of a puzzle-style online assessment, GitHub describes a timed take-home submitted as a pull request. The post describing it is from 2022, so confirm the current format with your recruiter.
Will GitHub interview me in Ruby?
Not always. You pick a language for the take-home, but several candidates report that the pull-request review round used Ruby on Rails, so an evening reading basic Rails code is time well spent.
How should I prepare for GitHub coding questions?
Practice practical problems under time limits, build small features against an API in your interview language, and prepare one system design in GitHub's domain. Explain every solution out loud, because follow-up questions about trade-offs matter as much as the first answer.
Can I use AI tools in a GitHub interview?
Only if the instructions you receive say so. Online assessments and live coding rounds generally forbid outside help, and some companies now state their AI policy in the invitation. Use AI to practice beforehand, and follow your employer's rules.
Practice this interview before the real one
The AI mock interview builds questions from your resume and the job description, reads them aloud and scores each spoken answer out of 10. Included on the free plan.
Start a mock interview