Interview Playbook / Healthcare & Life Sciences

How Epic Systems Interviews in 2026: Process, Questions & What They Score

HOW TO READ THIS PLAYBOOK

Compiled from 19 public sources: candidate interview reports, coaching guides, and Epic Systems's own hiring pages. Interview processes change and vary by role, team, level, and region. This is one well-documented shape of Epic Systems's interviews to prepare against, not a script of what your interview will be. Confirm specifics with your recruiter. SupaCV is not affiliated with or endorsed by Epic Systems.

Medium confidenceLast verified SEP 202619 sourcesSources

Epic is the privately held electronic health record company headquartered at 1979 Milky Way, Verona, Wisconsin. It is best known for hiring Software Developers to its Verona campus, and this dossier covers that track; Epic also hires Technical Solutions Engineers, Project Managers, Quality Management and Training staff through a broadly similar funnel, but public evidence for those tracks is much thinner. Relocation to the Madison area is part of the role, and Epic's own postings state candidates must be eligible to work in the US without visa sponsorship. Epic publishes its process as six named steps on careers.epic.com: Apply, Learn more about the role, Complete Skills Assessments, Have a final interview, Receive an offer, and Visit Epic. In practice candidate reports describe four real evaluation touchpoints: a short phone conversation with a developer or recruiter, a long proctored multi-section skills assessment that candidates commonly call the Sphinx, a final interview block of roughly three to four hours mixing company presentations with a project deep dive, a case study and often a pair-programming exercise, and then a decision. The assessment, not the interview, is the main filter: reports consistently describe two and a half to four hours covering timed mental arithmetic, logic and reasoning, a personality or workstyle section, an invented-programming-language rules section, and three to five coding problems written in a plain editor with no code execution. Epic does not publish an interview rubric or a named competency framework. The careers site states only that Epic values curiosity, ingenuity, leadership and perseverance, which is a values statement rather than published evaluation criteria, so no framework is claimed here. Epic also states it expects candidates to represent themselves honestly at every stage, explicitly including assessments and assignments. End-to-end duration is not published by Epic; third-party guides estimate roughly four to eight weeks, and one aggregator cites about 27 days from application to offer for software development intern roles.

The Process

  1. 1

    Apply (resume plus brief questions) · varies

    Epic's own process page says all roles require a quick application consisting of uploading a resume and answering a few brief questions, and that specifics vary by position. No duration is published. Intern postings are reviewed on a rolling basis, so timing varies by when you submit.

  2. 2

    Learn more about the role (phone conversation with a developer or recruiter) · about 30 minutes

    Epic calls this step 'Learn more about the role': a team member gives an overview of the position. Candidate reports describe a friendly, low-pressure call with a current developer or recruiter covering one project on your resume, why you want Epic, and your questions; one report puts it at 30 minutes and a coaching guide lists 30 minutes. Length varies by role and by who runs the call. At least one 2024 report describes completing the skills assessment before this call rather than after, so the order Epic publishes is the intended funnel, not a guarantee for every candidate.

  3. 3

    Complete Skills Assessments (the proctored multi-section test candidates call the Sphinx) · about 2.5 to 4 hours

    Epic's page says only that assessments include logic and reasoning questions and require no prep work. Candidate reports give 2.5 hours (2013), about 4 hours proctored (2019 intern), and 3 to 4 hours (2024); a coaching guide says about 3 hours. Sections reported: timed mental arithmetic, logic and reasoning, a personality or workstyle section, an invented-language rules section, and three to five coding problems. Duration varies by role and by test version.

  4. 4

    Have a final interview (virtual or onsite in Verona) · about 3 to 4 hours

    Epic describes this as the round where they get to know you and you learn about the job. Reports describe a block of roughly 4 hours of which about 2 hours are actual evaluation, wrapped in company presentations, plus a recruiter conversation; a coaching guide lists 3 hours. Components vary by candidate and reportedly are not run in a fixed order: developer Q and A, a project presentation with detailed follow-ups, a healthcare case study, a pair-programming exercise, a campus tour and lunch when onsite, and an HR or recruiter close.

  5. 5

    Receive an offer · varies

    Epic says it reaches out as soon as it makes a decision but publishes no turnaround. One candidate reported an offer two days after the final round, while another waited a little over a month just to hear the assessment result. Third-party guides put the whole process at roughly four to eight weeks, and one aggregator cites about 27 days application to offer for software development intern roles. Varies by role, recruiting season and volume.

  6. 6

    Visit Epic (paid trip to Madison and the Verona campus) · varies

    Epic's final published step: a trip to Madison at Epic's expense to explore the city and campus. This is a post-decision recruiting step, not an evaluation round. No duration published.

    Not an evaluation stage

Evaluation Framework

No publicly documented framework

Sample Interview Questions

Motivation and fit7 questions
  • Why do you want to work at Epic?
  • Why do you want to live and work in Madison, WI?
  • What do you want to do?
  • Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?
  • What excites you about being a software developer?
  • How do you stay up to date on the latest technology trends in your field?
  • Describe your experience working with healthcare data and systems.
Project deep dive4 questions
  • Describe a project you worked on.
  • Describe a coding project you are working on.
  • Present a personal project, then answer very specific questions about its algorithms, frameworks, challenges and technical decisions.Tests whether the presented project's technical depth and design decisions are genuinely the candidate's own work.
  • Walk me through one project on your resume in detail.Tests depth of ownership and technical recall on a resume project under detailed follow-up questioning.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

Behavioral and teamwork7 questions
  • Tell us about a complex technical challenge you faced. How did you approach and overcome it?
  • Describe a time in a project when you had a conflict.
  • What is your weakness?
  • How do you handle working on multiple projects with competing priorities?
  • Tell us about a time you had to balance speed and quality.
  • Tell me about a time you had to compromise on a technical design or solution.
  • How do you balance collaboration with working independently?
Skills assessment (Sphinx)9 questions
  • Answer roughly 10 mental arithmetic questions in about 2 minutes, with no calculator.Tests rapid mental arithmetic and triage under a hard time limit; guessing beats leaving blanks.
  • Given the rules of an unfamiliar or invented programming language, work out what a block of code produces.Tests rule application and learning speed on unfamiliar syntax rather than known-language knowledge.
  • Solve logic and pattern-reasoning items, including riddles that require no mathematics.Tests logical and lateral-thinking pattern recognition rather than mathematical calculation.
  • Complete a personality or workstyle questionnaire.
  • Write three to five coding solutions in a plain editor, with no ability to run the code.Tests core coding ability without IDE support; both solution accuracy and completion time are recorded.
  • Given a string of digits, return the letters and symbols it maps to on a phone keypad.Classic Letter Combinations of a Phone Number problem testing recursive or backtracking enumeration.
  • Determine whether a string of digits can be split into an additive sequence, where each number is the sum of the two before it.Additive Number style backtracking problem; listed as a sample, not confirmed asked in this loop.
  • Find the self-dividing numbers in a given range.Self Dividing Numbers style digit-check problem; listed as a sample, not confirmed asked in this loop.
  • Answer core computer science fundamentals questions on data structures and algorithms.Tests core data structure and algorithm fundamentals at modest, sub-hard LeetCode difficulty.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

Case study and pair programming4 questions
  • Design a system for identifying patients.Lightweight system-design prompt testing patient-identity-matching logic, typically followed by what-could-go-wrong probes.
  • Work through a case study on implementing a solution in the health field, then discuss the problems it could cause and how you would solve them.
  • Complete a pair-programming exercise with an Epic developer.Tests collaborative coding and think-aloud reasoning with an interviewer rather than solo silent work.
  • Ask your own questions about the role, the team and life at Epic.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

Coach's Tips

Treat the Skills Assessment as the real gate, not the interview. Epic's site says it needs no prep, but candidate reports describe 2.5 to 4 hours of proctored testing, and pass rates reported by aggregators for developer roles sit well under half (independently re-checked: 18% and 17% across two separate report pages). Book a quiet block, expect fatigue, and know that both accuracy and completion time are recorded even on the sections with no hard limit.

Practise coding in a bare text editor. Multiple reports say there is no IDE, no autocomplete and no way to run your code, and one candidate specifically found the lack of formatting support frustrating. Write out two or three array, string and hash-map problems in Notepad, check the syntax by eye, and get used to producing a correct first draft.

Drill mental arithmetic against a stopwatch. The timed maths section is reported as roughly 10 questions in 2 to 3 minutes, and some of the items are riddles rather than sums, so the skill is triage: answer what you can instantly, guess rather than leave blanks, and move on.

Prepare one project you can present in detail and defend line by line. The final round includes a project presentation where the interviewer probes algorithms, frameworks, specific decisions and challenges, and reports say the point is to verify how much of the work was genuinely yours. Rehearse the parts you did not build so you can say so cleanly.

Have a specific answer to 'Why Epic?' and to 'Why Madison?'. Both recur across independent reports, the role requires relocating to the Verona and Madison area, and generic mission language is easy to spot. Tie your answer to clinical software and to a concrete reason the place works for you.

Expect healthcare-shaped design and case prompts rather than FAANG-style distributed system design. A reported prompt is designing a system for identifying patients, with follow-ups on what could go wrong. Reason about identity collisions, duplicate records, data-entry error and patient safety, and say your assumptions out loud.

Answer the honesty policy on its own terms. Epic's process page states it expects candidates to represent themselves honestly at every stage, naming resumes, applications, assessments, assignments and interviews. Do not use assistance on the assessment.

Do not assume the published stage order is fixed for you personally. Most candidates go phone call then assessment, but at least one 2024 report completed the assessment first, so be ready for the skills test to arrive before you have spoken to anyone.

Common questions

How many stages are in Epic Systems's interview process?+

Epic Systems's process has 6 stages, in order: Apply (resume plus brief questions), Learn more about the role (phone conversation with a developer or recruiter), Complete Skills Assessments (the proctored multi-section test candidates call the Sphinx), Have a final interview (virtual or onsite in Verona), Receive an offer, Visit Epic (paid trip to Madison and the Verona campus).

Does Epic Systems have an official interview framework?+

Epic Systems does not have a publicly documented, named interview framework. Treat any informally reported evaluation themes as directional, not official.

What kinds of questions does Epic Systems ask?+

Epic Systems's question bank spans 5 categories: Motivation and fit; Project deep dive; Behavioral and teamwork; Skills assessment (Sphinx); Case study and pair programming.

How reliable is this Epic Systems interview playbook?+

This playbook is medium confidence, compiled from 19 public sources, and last verified September 6, 2026. It describes one well-documented shape of Epic Systems's interviews, not a guarantee of what any individual loop will look like.

Sources

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