We’re passionate about finding the right role for the people we hire. That’s why we’ve carefully crafted a multi-step interview process that goes beyond just reviewing a CV. From our initial screening to the assessment day, we focus on making the experience realistic and tailored to the job as possible. We want you to get a true sense of our working environment and what like to be part of our team.

Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect:

The Assessment Day

We understand that interviews can be nerve-wracking, but we’re here to make the process as transparent, informative, and encouraging as possible. The assessment day is designed to evaluate both your technical expertise and your ability to collaborate effectively within a team. We aim to replicate the kinds of challenges you’ll encounter in the role, so every task and question is closely aligned with the position you’ve applied for. The process includes a practical assessment and a values-based interview. Our values sit the heart of everything we do—from how we develop our products and deliver services, to how we recruit, support career growth, and celebrate success. You can read here what our values mean to us .

Pair Programming Interview

First up is our pair programming interview, where you’ll work on a coding problem alongside one of our developers whilst another developer observes. This isn’t just about seeing how well you can code; it’s also about evaluating your problem-solving skills, and how you collaborate with others. Our goal here is to make the experience as realistic as possible. We’re interested in how you approach the problem, your thought process, and how you work with others to find the best solution.
Once the pair programming session is finished, we’ll move on to the next phase of the day. But first, we take a break to show you around the office.

Office tour

We're proud of our office; it reflects our collaborative culture and the way we work. Since you'll be spending three days a week there, we think it's important for you to see the space firsthand and get a real feel for the environment you'd be joining.

A Chance to reflect

Once the office tour is done, we’ll sit down for a brief feedback session. You’ll receive feedback from the assessors on your pair programming performance—highlighting strengths and discussing areas for development. We believe transparency and feedback are core to a great candidate experience, so we’ll always take the time to talk through this with you, regardless of the outcome. Not everyone progresses past this stage, but we want the process to be valuable and constructive for you no matter what.

Lunch break

We want to make sure you’re well-rested and ready for the afternoon sessions of the interview. We believe it’s important to take a step away from the office environment before diving back in so you will have an hour to reset before the afternoon.

Afternoon: Values interview & technical

For our Professional and Senior Developer roles, we include a set of technical questions that focus on core software engineering principles such as clean code, testing, and system design. This stage also gives you the opportunity to whiteboard your responses, allowing you to demonstrate your architectural thinking and problem-solving approach.

Then we have our values interview, where we’ll discuss your motivations for applying for the role. We have designed 6 questions which will help you share times in your career or academia where you are aligned to these values.

For our Principal and Technical lead roles we have our whiteboarding task. In this session we’ll give you a problem to solve on the whiteboard. The goal is to assess your ability to break down complex problems, make architectural decisions, reason about trade-offs, and communicate your thought process clearly. It's about showcasing design thinking, scalability considerations, and understanding of system components like databases, APIs, caching, and load balancing.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, you’ll have a well-rounded view of what it’s like to work with us. From the pair programming challenge to the office environment and the values interview.

If you're successful after the assessment day, you'll be notified within a week and invited to a final interview with a member of our leadership team—often our Chief Technology Officer. This session is usually remote and offers a chance to focus more on our culture and why you want to work here. After this conversation, we’ll let you know whether we’ll be making an offer. Either way, you'll receive detailed feedback. We believe in sharing thoughtful feedback at every stage to support you in your job search and growth.

Good luck, and we can’t wait to meet you!

“What stood out to me the most was the support I received throughout the day. From candid conversations about what I was looking for, to collaborative debugging during the pairing exercise, immediate feedback afterwards, and a two-way technical interview; every interaction felt open and supportive. I felt like part of Autotrader before I had even joined."

Alicia Barczak - Front End Developer

“The interview day at Autotrader was really interesting and a lot of fun. Getting to meet people from across the business and work through relevant tasks gave me a real feel for what my co-workers would be like to work with and what the work at Autotrader involves.”

Tim Yates - Principal Developer