Scale AI New Grad SWE Card Game Interview Experience

Role: New Grad Software Engineer
Location: United States
Status: In process
Difficulty: Difficult

A preparation PDF about the card game was provided before the interview.

Python was used for the live coding round. The task was to build a card game with Player, Card, and Deck classes, simulate the game with four players, and determine the winner.

The rules were not algorithmically difficult, but the implementation required a lot of code in a short amount of time. State had to be tracked carefully across the deck, players, dealt cards, and game rounds.

The interviewer was helpful and pointed out mistakes early, which saved time during the implementation.

The follow-up asked how to improve the structure and make the code easier to extend when new rules are added.

A source-backed version of the four-player exercise is available on FastPrep: Four-Player Trick-Taking Card Game Simulation.

Main preparation advice: practice writing a large amount of clean Python code under a timer, debug state-heavy logic quickly, and spend more time on object-oriented implementation problems than on random LeetCode questions.