Scale AI 2026 New Grad SWE Task Scheduler Phone Screen

The phone screen used one task-scheduling problem with three parts.

First, they had to add tasks and always consume the unfinished task with the earliest deadline. The second part added subtasks, so a parent task couldn’t be consumed until its dependencies were done. The last part asked for a faster design using a better data structure, such as a heap.

They completed all three parts and were still waiting for the result. A detailed description of the task had been sent before the interview.

You can practice Task Processor: Dependencies and Deadlines on FastPrep.