Bank of America interview notes, page 4 of 5

Large Enterprises

Most of these Bank of America write-ups come from Software Engineers (32), then Data Scientists (11) and Machine Learning Engineers (2). The most reported rounds are the technical phone screen (26), the executive / final round (4), the recruiter screen (4) and the online assessment (3).

46 interview notes · updated Oct 2026

Bank of America·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Jun 2026

Did an onsite where the coding section got squeezed into the last 20 minutes after a long intro and system design discussion, then got hit with HTTP response creation and marshalling stuff that no amount of Leetcode grinding prepares you for.

Design a system that is fault tolerant. Walk through your approach.
Implement a method that creates an HTTP response, including marshalling and unmarshalling data from a dictionary, without IDE autocomplete.

“This part actually went fine.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026

Interviewing at Bank of America for a software engineering role on the Applied AI side of Equities Technology. Round one was a solid hour covering background, RAG, Python basics, and a coding problem. Round two is coming up and the agenda explicitly says more detailed AI questions plus a practical exercise, so I'm trying to figure out what to prep.

Walk us through your background and the projects you've worked on.
How does RAG work and what are the key considerations in building a retrieval pipeline?
What are some Python fundamentals you rely on when building AI or data-heavy applications?
Solve a coding problem in Python.

“Standard opener but they actually dug in pretty hard on specifics.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jul 2026

Quant researcher interview with a fairly involved statistics question about estimating volatility from a discrete Brownian motion path. Just the one question shared but it required real thought about what each statistic actually captures.

You observe a Brownian motion at integer time steps t=1 through 100, giving values X1 to X100. Define H as the running maximum, L as the running minimum, and C as the terminal value X100. After any rescaling or bias correction you see fit, which of these is the best estimator of sigma: (i) |C|, (ii) |H-L| minus |C|/2, or (iii) (H-L) squared plus C squared?

“This took me a minute to even parse.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Onsite - Coding / Algorithms

Jul 2026

Onsite at a hedge fund, got hit with a math/logic puzzle I'd never seen before and completely froze. Not on leetcode, not anywhere I'd practiced. Still not sure if my solution attempt even made sense.

Given a number of days, a max ascend distance per day, and a max descend distance per day, find the maximum elevation you can reach at any point, given that you must return to your starting elevation by the end of all days. On any given day you can only go up or down (not both), and you don't have to use the full distance.

“I blanked.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jul 2026

Got asked a concurrency/system design question during a recent interview and my answer didn't land the way I expected. Still not totally sure what they were looking for.

How would you handle multiple users trying to book the same seat at the same time?

“Said Redis distributed lock and DB-level constraints.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Recruiter / HR Screen

Jul 2026

Applied for an analyst role, had the interview last Friday, and it went fine enough that I didn't stress about it much. Then the recruiter called and said they liked me but were worried my CPA path would pull me back to public accounting eventually. Told them I'm planning to stick around for at least five years, recruiter said he'd pass that along and set up a final round, and now I'm just sitting here refreshing my inbox.

Given that you're pursuing your CPA, what's stopping you from leaving for public accounting once you get licensed?

“Wasn't expecting this to be the thing they flagged.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Recruiter / HR Screen

Jul 2026

Applied for a junior tax accountant role and got cut off 15 minutes into the HR screen because the recruiter said my accent wasn't American enough. The job posting didn't even describe the role as client-facing, so the whole thing felt like a bait-and-switch.

Can you walk me through your professional background?

“I gave what I thought was a solid answer.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Jul 2026

Took a Criteria cognitive assessment for a role I felt genuinely qualified for, got rejected because I didn't meet the minimum threshold, and now I'm questioning everything. The recruiter told me to just guess if I don't know the answer, which honestly raised more questions than it answered.

Math and numerical reasoning problems requiring calculation under time pressure.
Pattern recognition questions as part of a timed cognitive aptitude assessment.

“I finished 44 of 50 questions and felt pretty good about most of them.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Take-home Assignment

Jul 2026

Four rounds deep into an entry-level AIML Engineer role at a local enterprise data security company, and I'm genuinely considering walking away. The process started reasonable enough but ballooned into a 6-hour panel that ran two hours over, a week of silence, and then a take-home assignment that screams AI-generated instructions asking for production-grade C++ concurrency work from an entry-level candidate.

Walk through common data structures and explain when you'd choose one over another.
Explain low-level memory concepts in C++, specifically around pointers.
On a whiteboard, solve a data structures problem presented by each of three different managers sequentially.
Design an internal tool from scratch by talking through your approach and architecture decisions.
Demonstrate your depth of knowledge in AI and machine learning concepts.
Build a high-performance C++ analysis engine that handles millions of requests with concurrency controls, timestamp bucketing, 180-day data retention, and sub-quadratic query time, all within a one-hour take-home window.

“This came up across multiple rounds with different managers, which got repetitive fast.”

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Bank of America·Software Engineer·Recruiter / HR Screen

Aug 2026

First ever interview at a big firm, done online, and it went about as badly as a first interview can go without the call actually dropping. Laptop died right before the session, joined on mobile with a crooked camera angle, spent five minutes fixing it while the interviewers watched, then completely froze on the opening question. They rescheduled out of kindness but the whole thing was a mess.

Tell us about yourself, what you've worked on previously, and where you see yourself in the future.

“I had literally rehearsed this exact question the same morning.”

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