Adyen Software Engineer II interview questions

The Adyen application process was extremely long and, in the end, deeply frustrating. The process consisted of: 1. Recruiter interview 2. HackerRank assessment (3 hours) 3. Technical interview + system design (1.5 hours) 4. Leadership interview (1 hour) 5. Final HR negotiation After successfully passing the third round (technical + system design), I was explicitly informed that I would be invited to the Amsterdam office for the leadership interview for a Software Engineer II position. Although I had applied for Software Engineer, they decided to evaluate me for SE II based on my experience and performance. However, the leadership interview was a major disappointment. Instead of having a balanced discussion across multiple projects and experiences, the manager and lead kept circling around a single challenging project, repeatedly nit-picking details and not allowing me to move on to other work I had done. Despite multiple attempts, I think I was not given a fair chance to present the breadth of my experience. In the end, they concluded that I “don’t have that much experience” and categorized me as Graduate or Entry-Level, which directly contradicts: - Their own decision to interview me for SE II - My performance in earlier technical rounds This meant that over 6 hours of interviews, plus commuting time, travel costs, and several days of preparation, were effectively wasted due to inconsistent expectations and overly narrow evaluation in the final round. For a company that emphasizes engineering excellence and fairness, this experience felt disorganized, dismissive, and unnecessarily exhausting.