All styles

Playbook · Interview style

Security-focused

A screen for teams that treat security as a first-class concern: auth done right, the OWASP failure modes, and the instinct to threat-model before you build. Cargo-culted answers get found out fast here.

  • AuthN / AuthZ
  • OWASP
  • Crypto
  • APIs

Interview flow

A style plays out as a sequence of sessions — start each one on its own; your readiness rolls up across them.

  1. 1. Depth interviewA security depth round: auth, common vulns, and threat modelling.
    Start below
  2. 2. Code challengeSpot and fix a real vulnerability in a snippet.

What interviewers usually probe

  • Authentication vs authorization, and where teams conflate them.
  • The OWASP classics — injection, XSS, CSRF — and how you'd stop each.
  • Password and token handling, and what 'secure' actually requires.
  • Threat-modelling an endpoint before a line is written.

What we assess

  • Authentication and authorization design
  • Common web vulnerabilities and defences
  • Secure API and data handling
  • A threat-model-first mindset

What we don’t

  • Offensive security / pentestingThis is application-security engineering, not red-team or exploit development.
  • Algorithmic (DSA) roundsNo coding puzzles — practise those elsewhere.

Practise this style

Run an adaptive security-focused interview — pick your level, answer by voice or text, and get corrected like a senior engineer. Your first interview is free.

Practise Security-focused