1 min lesson

Technical phone screen(s) - no AI

Rebuild the main list in "Technical phone screen(s) - no AI", then say what each item changes.

Cursor runs first technical screens with no AI allowed other than autocomplete. That is deliberate - the inability to lean on a copilot is a signal-of-fundamentals filter. Even as an EM, you have to code and reason cleanly under time pressure, so practice cold.

Expect medium-hard coding, backend and distributed-systems flavored, often a focused primitive rather than a sprawling system.
Languages tilt to TypeScript (product), Rust (performance) and Python (ML) - be fluent in at least one and able to read the others.
You still have to show fundamentals: data structures, complexity reasoning and a clean implementation that runs.
Talk through trade-offs as you go; the screen scores how you reason, not just whether the code passes.

Backend EMs should expect problems that brush against the domain: a rate limiter, an LRU cache, a retry-with-backoff helper, a dedup/idempotency map or a small queue consumer. Implement the core correctly first, then layer in the edge cases out loud.

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Full explanation

Be ready to write something this concrete unaided

Be ready to write something this concrete unaided - token-bucket rate limiter with no library helpts

class TokenBucket {
  private tokens: number;
  private lastRefill: number;

  constructor(
    private readonly capacity: number,
    private readonly refillPerSec: number,
  ) {
    this.tokens = capacity;
    this.lastRefill = Date.now();
  }

  // Returns true if the request is allowed, false if it should be dropped/queued.
  tryConsume(cost = 1): boolean {
    const now = Date.now();
    const elapsedSec = (now - this.lastRefill) / 1000;
    this.tokens = Math.min(this.capacity, this.tokens + elapsedSec * this.refillPerSec);
    this.lastRefill = now;
    if (this.tokens >= cost) {
      this.tokens -= cost;
      return true;
    }
    return false;
  }
}

Interview move

Narrate the entire time. State your approach before you type, call out the complexity and name the edge cases you are deferring so the interviewer knows you saw them. When you hit a fork, say which branch you are taking and why. Silence reads as either stuck or hiding and the screen rewards a legible reasoning path over a flawless first pass.

Rust is in fashion, but don't out-clever yourself

If you reach for Rust to look hardcore and then fight the borrow checker for ten minutes, you have burned the round. Pick the language you are actually fast in unaided, usually TypeScript or Python for most candidates and spend the saved time on correctness and trade-offs. Fluency under pressure beats a flashy language choice you can't sustain.

QWhy does Cursor disallow AI beyond autocomplete in the first technical screens and how should that change your prep?

Technical phone screen(s) - no AI

Step 1 of 2

Be ready to write something this concrete unaided