1 min lesson
The onsite is the decision and it's deliberate
Make the call on "Which stage is the decision round in Cursor's Software Engineer, Product loop and what makes its format distinctive?" Name the clue that decides it.
Step 1 of 2
CEO Michael Truell has called the two-day onsite “one of the more unorthodox things we do,” and Cursor has kept the format past 200+ employees. That persistence tells you the build round isn't a hazing ritual. It's the single best signal they've found for the actual job, so prep should bias toward it, not toward LeetCode drills.
The number of technical screens, whether you get the two-day version and the exact order all shift by candidate and level. If a recruiter describes a slightly different sequence than what you read here, believe the recruiter. The phases below are the reliable structure; the counts are a typical pattern.