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

The complete process, reported questions, and what interviewers score.

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HubSpot / Interview snapshot

10

stages from
application to offer

41

reported questions

17

public sources

Last verifiedOct 2026
HOW TO READ THIS PLAYBOOK

Independent: SupaCV is not affiliated with or endorsed by HubSpot. This is one well-documented shape of HubSpot's interviews, not a script: processes change and vary by role, team, level, and region, so confirm specifics with your recruiter.

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01 / For every HubSpot candidate

The process, start to finish.

HubSpot is a CRM and marketing/sales software company that hires across sales, customer success, marketing and engineering. This playbook covers the software engineering track, because it has the most public candidate reports. HubSpot's official candidate-experience page lists a general process and says it can vary by role: application review (follow-up within 5 days), a recruiter phone interview, a role-dependent assessment (a take-home such as a coding test, role play or content assignment), a hiring manager phone interview, face-to-face interviews over Zoom with 3-5 HubSpotters, then a debrief and decision.

HubSpot says it uses tools like BrightHire for interview notes and that a human panel scores and decides in a live debrief. For engineers, candidate reports and coaching guides describe a timed API challenge, usually about 3 hours: fetch data from an endpoint, transform it, and POST the result to another endpoint.

Sources disagree on whether it comes before or after the roughly 30 minute recruiter or HR call: HubSpot's page and three coaching guides list the recruiter call first, while several candidate reports put the assessment first. The virtual onsite is then reported as about 2 to 4 rounds of roughly 45-60 minutes each: coding, system design, and in some loops a second system design round and a behavioral round led by the hiring manager.

Several candidate reports for Software Engineer roles (level not stated) describe a final loop of just two rounds, one coding and one system design. At Senior SWE 2 (L5), guides add a written project document plus a live discussion, and the guides disagree on whether Senior SWE 1 also gets a second design round. A video streaming design (Netflix or YouTube style) is the system design prompt candidates report most often.

HubSpot publishes its HEART values (humble, empathetic, adaptable, remarkable, transparent) and says its Culture Code guides how it hires. HubSpot's public pages do not publish a scoring rubric. The candidate evidence here comes mainly from Jointaro, Exponent/Aced, Blind and prep guides rather than Glassdoor or 1point3acres.

Stage 1:

Application review

Within 5 days

HubSpot's Talent Acquisition team reviews the application and says it follows up within 5 days on whether you are moving forward. HubSpot says the process can vary by role.

Stage 2:

Recruiter / HR screen

About 30 minutes

HubSpot lists the recruiter phone interview as step 2, before any assessment, and says not to expect personalized feedback at this stage. Coaching guides and candidate reports describe it as covering background, why HubSpot, what you want next, and salary expectations; several reports say it includes behavioral questions. Order varies: interviewing.io, Prepfully, Codemia, Aced and one 2022 senior Jointaro report put this call before the API challenge, while the 2025 Jointaro reports (May, September, November, London graduate), the Toronto 2022 report and Techprep put the assessment first.

order varies

Stage 3:

Online assessment / API challenge

About 3 hours (timed); one Blind comment says about 2 hours

HubSpot's page only says that, depending on the role, you may get a take-home such as a coding test, role play or content assignment, and it gives no time limit. The engineering format comes from candidates and coaching guides: call an API to get data, process it (sometimes with a LeetCode-style step), and POST the result to another endpoint. Interviewing.io and Prepfully say a 200 response means you passed; interviewing.io adds that the zip of your code can be submitted after the 3-hour window. Prepfully says most candidates finish in 2 to 2.5 hours. One graduate candidate in London took it on CodeSignal. Position varies: see the recruiter screen entry for which sources put it before or after the recruiter call.

order varies

Stage 4:

Technical phone screen

About 60 minutes

Live coding. Only one prep guide lists this stage, and most candidate reports go straight from the assessment and recruiter call to the onsite.

single source

Stage 5:

Hiring manager interview

varies

HubSpot lists a manager phone interview as step 4 and says personalized feedback starts here if you do not advance. No duration is stated. In engineering reports it sometimes appears as a hiring manager call in the onsite, or as the behavioral round led by the hiring manager. Timing and placement vary by team and level.

Stage 6:

Virtual onsite: coding round

About 60 minutes

Reported as LeetCode easy to medium algorithm problems, or an HTTP/API-flavored coding task. One reviewer described the HTTP task as similar to the API assessment but easier. Interviewing.io says the round uses CoderPad and that interviewers value edge cases and tests; Prepfully says interviewers give hints and look for candidates who go deeper.

Stage 7:

Virtual onsite: system design round(s)

45-60 minutes per round; one or two rounds depending on level and source

A video streaming service is the prompt candidates report most often. Sources disagree on the second round: Prepfully says Senior SWE 1 gets one design round and Senior SWE 2 gets two, while interviewing.io says both get a second round (an application-design question such as a weather service for Senior SWE 1). A 2022 senior candidate reported two designs, TinyURL and a weather widget. Accounts of strictness differ: two candidates said small mistakes or details were costly, while interviewing.io says a broad answer matters more than one optimized solution and that interviewers drill into technologies you mention.

level-dependent

Stage 8:

Virtual onsite: behavioral / values round

45-60 minutes

Situational questions, often led by the hiring manager. Interviewing.io, Prepfully and Codemia list it, and Aced lists a behavioral round as the final round for an L5 candidate; Prepfully does not say every level gets one. A senior candidate reported behavioral questions in every round, not only this one.

Stage 9:

Senior-level project deep dive

varies

Sources describe different formats. Interviewing.io says Senior SWE 2 (L5) writes a document about a past project and gets a live interview if the write-up is liked; Prepfully adds that two or more senior engineers lead that discussion. Aced lists a deep dive project round for an L5 candidate. Codemia describes a 60-minute walkthrough of a take-home project (and a 3-5 hour take-home in place of the API challenge) without naming a level. Techprep says senior and staff candidates may get a technical deep dive round.

level-dependent

Stage 10:

Debrief and decision

About 1-2 weeks after the final round (one guide); guides put the whole process at about 2-5 weeks

Per HubSpot, the panel discusses, scores and decides in a live debrief, and candidates who do not advance after the face-to-face rounds can request a feedback call. Overall length in reports: 3 weeks (Exponent/Aced), 2-4 weeks (Prepfully and interviewing.io), 3-5 weeks (Codemia). Individual reports range widely: one 2022 senior candidate said the whole process took about 4 days, and one Toronto candidate's process took about 4 months because of scheduling.

Reported interview time, one scale in minutes

Where the minutes go

  • Recruiter / HR screen~30 min
  • Technical phone screen~60 min
  • Virtual onsite: coding round~60 min
  • Virtual onsite: system design round45 to 60 min
  • Virtual onsite: behavioral / values round45 to 60 min
Low end of what is reportedUp to the high end

Not drawn: Application review, Online assessment / API challenge, Hiring manager interview, Senior-level project deep dive and Debrief and decision, whose durations are not given in minutes.

02 / What HubSpot scores

HEART

  1. 01

    humble

  2. 02

    empathetic

  3. 03

    adaptable

  4. 04

    remarkable

  5. 05

    transparent

HubSpot's careers page, under the heading "Deliver with HEART", lists five items: humble, empathetic, adaptable, remarkable, and transparent. The same page says the Culture Code guides how HubSpot builds, hires and leads. HubSpot publishes these as company values, not as a scoring rubric, and does not say how interviewers score them. In HCAMag trade press, HubSpot's APAC managing director said HEART is covered in every hiring round. Item names are copied in the lowercase form the official page uses.

The HEART tags on sample behavioral questions below follow Prepfully's HEART-labelled samples and the wording of the questions; they are not a HubSpot mapping. Sources: https://www.hubspot.com/careers and https://www.hcamag.com/asia/news/general/why-has-hubspots-culture-code-gone-viral/153593

03 / Coach's notes

Coach's tips.

  1. 01

    Rehearse the API assessment end to end before you start it: GET (including paginated data), parse JSON, transform, and POST to a validation endpoint, in a language whose HTTP and JSON libraries you know well. Interviewing.io and Prepfully describe it as timed at 3 hours and passed by getting a 200 response, so a working submission beats elegant unfinished code. Interviewing.io says the zip of your code can be submitted after the window.

  2. 02

    Prepare a video streaming design (Netflix or YouTube) in depth. It is the prompt candidates report most often. Cover requirements, API design, storage, CDN and caching, encoding, and failure handling. Accounts of grading differ: two candidates say small mistakes or details counted against them, while interviewing.io says broad coverage matters more than one optimized solution and that interviewers drill into any technology you name.

  3. 03

    Read HubSpot's Culture Code and prepare stories for each HEART value (humble, empathetic, adaptable, remarkable, transparent). HubSpot says the code guides hiring, its APAC leadership said HEART is covered in every hiring round, and one senior candidate was turned down for non-technical reasons despite strong technical feedback.

  4. 04

    Expect behavioral questions beyond the recruiter and hiring manager calls: one senior candidate reported them in every round. Have a specific, sincere answer to 'Why HubSpot?', since two candidate reports say it was asked in the recruiter or HR call.

  5. 05

    If you are interviewing at senior level, ask your recruiter whether your loop includes a second system design round or a written project document with a discussion. Guides agree the document applies to Senior SWE 2 (L5) but disagree on whether Senior SWE 1 also gets a second design round.

  6. 06

    HubSpot says its face-to-face interviews run by video over Zoom, and that you get personalized feedback if you do not advance after the manager interview, plus an option for a feedback call after the face-to-face stage. Ask your recruiter for the exact round list and order, because loops differ by team, level and region, and reports disagree on whether the assessment or the recruiter call comes first.

04 / The research

Where this page comes from.

Compiled from public sources across 9 sites. HubSpot's own page is among them: hubspot.com/careers/candidate-experience.

sites
9
coaching and prep guides
12
HubSpot's own pages
4
candidate reports and forums
1

Source composition

Where the research comes from

Grouped by the kind of site that published each source: HubSpot's own domain, candidate forums, and everything else.

  • Coaching and prep guides12
  • HubSpot's own pages4
  • Candidate reports and forums1

05 / The questions

Reported questions, by category.

Showing questions for

Roles are grouped by the category each question fits, not by the source.

Coding and API assessment

15 questions

  1. Online assessment: fetch data from a provided API endpoint, process or transform it, and POST the result to another endpoint.

    Tests HTTP API integration: GET data, parse JSON, transform it, then POST the result to a validation endpoint.

  2. Merge two sorted arrays (or lists) using only the first k elements.

    Tests a two-pointer merge of sorted inputs that stops after k elements, with boundary handling.

  3. Given a string, find the most commonly occurring substring (of size k).

    Tests a sliding window over a string with a hash map to count k-length substrings in O(n) time.

  4. Merge K Sorted Lists.

    Tests a min-heap or divide and conquer merge of k linked lists, giving O(N log k) time.

  5. Meeting Rooms II (minimum number of rooms for a set of meeting intervals).

    Tests interval scheduling with sorted start times and a min-heap of end times to count concurrent meetings.

  6. Top K Frequent Elements.

    Tests frequency counting with a hash map, then a heap or bucket sort to pick the k most frequent items.

  7. Two Sum.

    Tests the hash map complement lookup that cuts a pair search from O(n^2) to O(n).

  8. Merge Two Sorted Lists.

    Tests linked list pointer manipulation to splice two sorted lists, using a dummy head and edge cases.

  9. Merge Sorted Array.

    Tests in-place two-pointer merging from the back of the array so no element is overwritten.

  10. Search for a word in a 2D board (Word Search).

    Tests DFS with backtracking on a 2D grid, tracking visited cells and pruning early.

  11. Merge Intervals.

    Tests sorting by start time, then a linear sweep that merges overlapping intervals.

  12. Find the matching string pattern in a given string.

    Tests substring search, from a naive scan to KMP or a rolling hash, and the time tradeoffs between them.

  13. In JavaScript, write a function that adds commas to a number and attach it globally (for example on a prototype).

    Tests JavaScript prototype extension and number formatting with thousands separators.

  14. Live coding round focused on HTTP: call an API and work with the response, similar to the online assessment.

    Tests making an HTTP request live, parsing the response and handling errors and edge cases.

  15. Build a rate-limited API client with retry logic and exponential backoff.

    Tests resilient API client design: rate limiting, retries and exponential backoff on failures.

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.

System design

13 questions

  1. Design a video streaming service like Netflix or YouTube, given some functional requirements.

    Tests breadth in system design: video upload and encoding, storage, CDN delivery, caching and failure handling.

  2. Design a URL shortening service (TinyURL).

    Tests short code generation, key-value storage, read-heavy caching and collision handling.

  3. Design a weather widget or weather service.

    Tests data storage, reliability, horizontal scaling and tradeoffs for a read-heavy weather data service.

  4. Design a task management system.

    Tests data modeling, API design and consistency for tasks, assignments and status updates.

  5. Design a notification system (multiple channels, near real-time).

    Tests queue-based fan-out across channels, delivery guarantees, retries and near-real-time latency.

  6. Design a reliable workflow execution engine for marketing automation (triggers and actions).

    Tests event-driven trigger and action execution with durable state, retries and idempotency.

  7. Design a webhook delivery system for a CRM platform.

    Tests reliable delivery with retries, backoff, idempotency, request signing and slow or failing receivers.

  8. Design a search and filtering system for a CRM with millions of contacts.

    Tests indexing and search architecture, filtering over millions of records and keeping the index in sync.

  9. Design a digital music streaming platform like Spotify.

    Tests audio streaming design: storage, CDN delivery, playlists, search and recommendations at scale.

  10. Design a distributed task scheduler.

    Tests job queuing, scheduling, worker coordination, fault tolerance and avoiding duplicate runs.

  11. Design a contact deduplication service.

    Tests object-oriented design plus record matching: normalized keys, similarity scoring and merge rules.

  12. Explain what happens when you type a web address into a browser.

    Tests networking fundamentals: DNS lookup, TCP and TLS handshakes, the HTTP exchange and page rendering.

  13. Walk through the architecture decisions in your take-home project.

    Tests defending design tradeoffs, scalability and maintainability choices in code you built yourself.

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.

Every role

Behavioral and values

13 questions

  1. Why HubSpot?

  2. What are you looking for in your next opportunity?

  3. Tell me about a time that you failed or made a mistake. What did you learn from it?

  4. Tell me about a mentor in your life. How did they affect you?

  5. Tell me about one of your favorite coding projects.

  6. Tell me about a time you had conflict within a group or team. How did you resolve it?

  7. What was a time you had to work with someone with a different background (cultural or technical)?

  8. Tell me about a time you had to give difficult feedback, for example technical feedback to a peer.

  9. Describe a time you disagreed with a lead engineer's architectural direction.

  10. Describe a time you had to push back on a product requirement for technical reasons.

  11. Tell me about a time priorities shifted unexpectedly and how you handled it.

  12. Tell me about a time you had to support a struggling teammate.

  13. Tell me about something you delivered that exceeded expectations.

Your next step

Interviewing at HubSpot?

Make sure your resume gets you to the first round.

Score your resume, then prep for HubSpot

Practicing for HubSpot against your resume is in Interview Prep on Career.

Common questions

Quick answers.

How many stages are in HubSpot's interview process?

HubSpot has 10 stages, set out in The process.

What framework does HubSpot use to evaluate candidates?

HubSpot evaluates candidates against HEART, set out in What HubSpot scores.

What kinds of questions does HubSpot ask?

HubSpot's questions fall into 3 categories, grouped in The questions.

How reliable is this HubSpot interview playbook?

It is compiled from public sources, and the evidence is in The research.

Sources (17)

Every public source this page was compiled from. Links open in a new tab.

9 sites, by sources

  • jointaro.com6
  • hubspot.com4
  • hcamag.com1
  • interviewing.io1
  • prepfully.com1
  • codemia.io1
  • techprep.app1
  • aced.io1
  • teamblind.com1
  1. 01hubspot.com/careers/candidate-experience
  2. 02hubspot.com/careers
  3. 03hubspot.com/careers/hiring-ai
  4. 04hubspot.com/culture-code/the-hubspot-culture-code
  5. 05hcamag.com/asia/news/general/why-has-hubspots-culture-code-gone-v…
  6. 06interviewing.io/hubspot-interview-questions
  7. 07prepfully.com/interview-guides/hubspot-software-engineer
  8. 08codemia.io/guides/hubspot-software-engineer
  9. 09techprep.app/blog/hubspot-interview-process
  10. 10aced.io/experiences/hubspot-senior-software-engineer-interview…
  11. 11jointaro.com/interviews/companies/hubspot/experiences/software-engi…
  12. 12jointaro.com/interviews/companies/hubspot/experiences/software-engi…
  13. 13jointaro.com/interviews/companies/hubspot/experiences/senior-softwa…
  14. 14jointaro.com/interviews/companies/hubspot/experiences/software-engi…
  15. 15jointaro.com/interviews/companies/hubspot/experiences/software-engi…
  16. 16jointaro.com/interviews/companies/hubspot/experiences/graduate-soft…
  17. 17teamblind.com/post/hubspot-onsite-interview-xfpumlks

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