InterSystems Interview Questions & Experiences

InterSystems·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026

Got a coding question at InterSystems that involved reading ObjectScript, which I had basically never touched before. It was a technical phone screen and the whole thing hinged on whether you could trace through some pretty niche language semantics under pressure.

Given a snippet of ObjectScript code where a global variable acts as a two-level ordered hashmap, trace through the execution step by step and predict the exact output. The key operation is a reverse-order iteration over the second-level subscript keys using $order with a direction argument of -1.

“I had never written a line of ObjectScript in my life and they just dropped this on me.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026

InterSystems software engineer interview where they hand you a chunk of their own real code and ask you to tear it apart. Not a leetcode grind, more like a code review session with someone watching over your shoulder.

You are given a snippet of real code from the interviewer's codebase. Walk through it, identify any bugs or design issues, propose fixes, and reason through edge cases. The interviewer will give hints if you get stuck.

“This format tripped me up more than I expected.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026

Interviewed for a software engineering role at InterSystems and got a fairly deep technical question around XML processing. Not the kind of thing you can wing with surface-level knowledge.

You have an XML document where some elements contain CDATA sections that are themselves valid XML. Write code to detect these CDATA blocks, strip the wrapper, and inline the inner XML so the whole thing parses as one unified tree. Also explain why standard parsers choke on the original input, what edge cases you need to handle, and how you'd test it.

“This one took me a second to even parse the premise.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

Jun 2026

Behavioral round at InterSystems for a software engineer role. Pretty much one big open-ended question about teamwork, which sounds easy until you're actually sitting there trying to pick the right project to talk about.

Walk me through a past project where you worked on a team. What were the biggest challenges you ran into (technical, interpersonal, scope, deadlines) and how did you and the team deal with them? What did you take away from it?

“This question is deceptively wide.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Interview for a software engineer role at Intersystems that was basically a teaching exercise. They had me pretend I was a TA again and walk through a networking concept live, which was either a fun format or kind of nerve-wracking depending on how you feel about being put on the spot mid-explanation.

Pick one networking concept and teach it to a beginner in 3 to 5 minutes. Cover a definition, an analogy, common misconceptions, and end with a comprehension check.
How would you adjust that same explanation if your audience had no technical background at all?
What would you do if a student pushed back on your explanation or said they thought you were wrong?

“I went with the three-way handshake because it felt like the safest bet from my TA days.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Recruiter / HR Screen

May 2026

Behavioral screen for a software engineer role at InterSystems, basically just one question about motivation and fit.

Why do you want to work at InterSystems specifically? Walk through what draws you to the company, whether that's the products, the engineering culture, the healthcare data space, or something else, and how it connects to your background and where you want to go.

“Pretty standard fit question but InterSystems is niche enough that you can't just wing it.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Got a classic brain teaser during a software engineering interview at InterSystems. Not the kind of thing I expected to spend 10 minutes sweating over, but here we are.

You have two ropes that each burn completely in 60 minutes, but they burn unevenly. Using only these ropes and a lighter, how would you measure exactly 45 minutes?

“The 60-minute part is trivial, just burn one rope.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Two-part interview at InterSystems for a software engineering role: first half was resume and behavioral stuff, second half was a code-reading exercise in a language I'd never seen before. The code-reading part was genuinely interesting, kind of low-pressure in a weird way since nobody expects you to know the language.

Walk me through a project on your resume and explain the technical decisions you made.
Given code written in an unfamiliar programming language shared on screen, explain what each section does based on syntax and context.

“Pretty standard opener, talked through a backend project I'd worked on.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Interviewed for a software engineering role at Intersystems and got a classic palindrome substring problem. Pretty standard algorithmic interview, nothing too surprising, though they wanted verbal explanation of the approach rather than actual code which threw me off a little.

Given a string, find the longest contiguous substring that reads the same forwards and backwards. Explain your approach, time and space complexity, and any edge cases you'd handle.

“They told me upfront no coding needed, just talk through it.”

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InterSystems·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Two-part interview at InterSystems for a software engineer role. First half was a resume and project walkthrough, second half shifted into a coding discussion where they asked about longest palindromic substring but wanted verbal explanation rather than actual code. Pretty reasonable as far as these things go.

Walk me through your resume and past projects.
Given a string, how would you find the longest palindromic substring? No code needed, just explain your approach and cover both the O(n^2) expand-around-center method and Manacher's algorithm, including the trade-offs between them.

“Standard stuff.”

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