SpaceX Software Engineer Full-Time Six-Hour DNA Take-Home Assessment

Role: Software Engineer
Result: No offer
Interview time: March 2025
Location: Hawthorne, California
Application channel: Online application
Experience rating: Positive
Difficulty: Difficult

Recruiter phone interview

The recruiter asked about projects and experience listed on the candidate's résumé. The discussion also covered the most difficult project or issue the candidate had faced and how it was resolved.

Six-hour take-home coding assessment

The assessment contained two reported tasks:

1. Prepare a summary of the proposed ideas and provide a coding implementation. The report does not preserve the exact subject or acceptance criteria for this task.
2. Read a provided text file, find the matching DNA sequence, and produce the requested output format.

The report does not disclose the input-file structure, the definition of a match, whether overlapping matches count, the output schema, examples, input limits, allowed languages, test behavior, or scoring criteria.

The corresponding FastPrep exercise is DNA Sequence Match. Its complete file model and matching rules provide a runnable practice contract while keeping the source's missing details explicit.