2 min lesson
Take-home and onsite technical rounds
Imagine this comes up at work: "Later technical rounds at Cursor may allow open AI use. Why is that a higher bar, not a lower one and what should you demonstrate?" Start with the practical move.
Step 1 of 2
Senior and staff candidates may get a take-home of roughly 4-8 hours, built to give meaningful signal on how you engineer for real. The on-site technical block then adds a coding round, an infrastructure system-design round and a deep-dive on your past infra work.
The take-home is a realistic infra or systems problem. Treat the deliverable like production code, because that's what's being graded. A strong submission wins on its engineering habits: the README, the tests and honest notes on what you'd do with more time.
- Round
- Take-home
- Format
- 4-8 hrs, async
- What earns the yes
- Tests, README, reproducible setup, clear tradeoff notes
- Round
- Coding round
- Format
- Live, AI often allowed
- What earns the yes
- Fluent at driving AI tools with judgment, not just raw speed
- Round
- System design
- Format
- Live, ~60 min
- What earns the yes
- Infra design under real constraints: latency, cost, failure modes
- Round
- Past-work deep-dive
- Format
- Live, ~45-60 min
- What earns the yes
- Depth below the headline; the decisions and tradeoffs you owned
| Round | Format | What earns the yes |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home | 4-8 hrs, async | Tests, README, reproducible setup, clear tradeoff notes |
| Coding round | Live, AI often allowed | Fluent at driving AI tools with judgment, not just raw speed |
| System design | Live, ~60 min | Infra design under real constraints: latency, cost, failure modes |
| Past-work deep-dive | Live, ~45-60 min | Depth below the headline; the decisions and tradeoffs you owned |
One shift to expect: later rounds may allow open use of Cursor or other AI tools. That's not a relaxation - it raises the bar on judgment. Cursor wants to see you drive AI well, scope a prompt, verify output and reject a bad suggestion, because that's how the team actually works.
- 1Read the brief twice. Note what's explicit, what's implied and what you'll assume - then write those assumptions down.
- 2Make it reproducible. A clean setup that runs in one command beats a fancier solution a reviewer can't start.
- 3Test the risky parts. You don't need 100% coverage; you need tests where a bug would actually hurt.
- 4Write the tradeoff note. Say what you'd cut, what you'd harden and the cost/reliability calls you made.
- 5Cut scope visibly. Shipping a smaller, solid thing with a clear "here's what's next" beats a sprawling half-build.