Talroo·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen
May 2026
Talroo software engineer interview that leaned surprisingly heavy on math and probability puzzles rather than pure coding. Three questions, mix of geometry, combinatorics, and a classic logic puzzle. Felt more like a quantitative reasoning screen than a typical SWE round.
- Two quarter-circles are drawn inside a 1x1 square, one centered at the bottom-left corner and one at the top-right corner. What is the exact area of the region where they overlap?
- From a standard 52-card deck, five cards are drawn at once. What is the probability of getting a flush that is not a straight flush? Write out the counting formula explicitly.
- You have a 100-floor building and can use as many marbles as you want, but only two are allowed to break. What strategy minimizes the worst-case number of drops to find the highest safe floor, and what is that minimum number?
“This one tripped me up more than I expected.”