Interview Process

Here’s an overview of our interview process. It varies a bit from role to role but mostly stays the same – the way we think about the people we want to work with is consistent across roles and teams.

The whole process is a two-way street. Every conversation is as much your chance to interview us – ask whatever you want, to whoever you meet. And no matter the outcome: if you want holistic feedback, shoot us a message at the end and we’ll share our honest read.

Our stance on AI in the process

Use AI. We do, every day. One condition: hand in every prompt and every question you asked along with your solution. The transcript is part of the submission. How you talk to the machine – what you ask, what you accept, what you push back on – tells us how you think, and we review it as carefully as the result. You’re responsible for what you submit: it carries your name, whatever produced it.

Prefer to work without AI? Also completely fine. Either way, what we’re evaluating is the thinking.

Engineering Trainee (minimum 6 months full-time)

Stage	Duration	Purpose of you	Purpose of us
Fit & Problem-solving Call	15 mins	Learn about the team and the problem solving we do	Understand your working style and the most challenging task you’ve solved
Take-home Test	48 hours	See if you enjoy this kind of work	Assess Frontend, Backend, System Design, plus your AI transcript
Review the test	30-60 mins	Meeting a potential colleague	Understand how you arrived at each decision
Meet 1 person from the team	30 mins	Meet a future teammate – they’ll also interview you; ask them anything	An independent read from a colleague you’d work with

Senior Engineer

Stage	Duration	Purpose of you	Purpose of us
Fit Call	30 mins	Learn about appleute and the role	Understand your motivation and experience
Fit & Problem-solving Call	30 mins	Learn about the team and our problems	Your working style, your hardest solved problem
Take-home Submission	48 hours	A real problem from our work, on your own time	Depth of your solution – plus your AI transcript
Practical Exercise	60-90 mins	Feel the kind of work we do, live	Frontend, Backend, System Design (split in 2 parts; your interviewer will tell you)
Meet 1 person from the team	30 mins	Meet a future teammate, they’ll also interview you; ask them anything	An independent read from a colleague you’d work with
Paid Collaborative Work Session	5-10 days	Feel what working with us is like	Nothing tells us more than working on something real together

Design and Content

Stage	Duration	Purpose of you	Purpose of us
Fit Call	30 mins	Learn about appleute and the role	Your motivation and experience
Fit & Problem-solving Call	30 mins	Learn about the team and our problems	Your working style, your hardest solved problem
Practical Exercise – create a design or write a test article	24-48 hours	Feel the kind of work we do	Role-relevant skills and problem solving
Meet 1 person from the team	30 mins	Meet a future teammate, they’ll also interview you; ask them anything	An independent read from a colleague you’d work with
Paid Collaborative Work Session	5-10 days	Feel what working with us is like	Nothing tells us more than working on something real together

Sales & Project Management (one role)

You’ll own both sides of the customer relationship: creating new opportunities and growing the accounts we already serve. The process reflects both halves.

Stage	Duration	Purpose of you	Purpose of us
Fit & Problem-solving Call	15 mins	Learn about the team, how we sell and how we run accounts	Your working style, the hardest deal or project you’ve steered
Meet 1 person from the team	30 mins	Meet a future teammate – they’ll also interview you; ask them anything	An independent read from a colleague you’d work with
Case Study	48 hours	Our real problems, both halves: which buyer you’d pursue and why – and an account whose product works: where does it go next?	Judgment on qualification and walking away, and how you grow an account beyond its current version
Case Study presentation	30 mins	See the level of detail we operate at	Communication, structure, and how you’d run the customer conversation
Paid Collaborative Work Session	5-10 days	Feel what working with us is like	Nothing tells us more than working together

Additional information about the interview experience

The process is completely remote.
Our aim is to finish within 5 weeks from application to offer.
Take-home challenges are always time-boxed – nobody should win by secretly spending three times as long.
Take-home challenges are always drawn from real appleute work, so you feel the actual job.
We see the process as a dialogue. We want you to build conviction – it helps nobody if you notice appleute isn’t your cup of tea 3 months in.
We work with interview questionnaires because they reduce bias and lead to better decisions. Don’t be surprised if we insist on getting back to specific questions.
We don’t share candidate evaluations between interviewers – it biases their judgment. The person you meet from the team interviews you fresh, and won’t know what you discussed before.
We do at least 2 reference calls at the end of the process – but we never approach anyone at your current company unless you explicitly tell us to.
The 5-10 day work session is paid, based on the role’s salary range per day. We review the session together and decide how to go forward.