Stripe's New AI Programming Exercise Interview - What It’s Actually Like
So it seems like Stripe recently added a new AI Programming Exercise round to their onsite loop.
Sharing what we’ve gathered from a few candidates who went through it recently:
The interview runs in HackerRank, but it’s not the standard coding setup. There’s a built-in AI chat window, kind of like a lightweight Cursor, that you can talk to. You can ask it to read the README, come up with a plan, write code, add tests, debug, and so on.
The task itself looks roughly like this:
You’re given a list of transactions and a list of rules. Each rule says whether to accept or block a transaction, followed by an if condition. You need to parse the rules and decide whether a transaction matches the condition.
The problem consists of multiple parts. It starts pretty straightforward, mostly keyword and string matching, but later parts get trickier with boolean logic like AND / OR, and each section builds on the previous ones. There’s a detailed README, so reading and understanding the spec quickly is a big part of it.
The actual coding portion is apparently only around 30 minutes, so trying to hand-code everything yourself may not be realistic. The expectation seems to be that you lean heavily on the AI. You can technically write it all yourself, but there’s a good chance you won’t finish.
A strategy that worked for people:
- Have the AI read the full README.
- Ask it to summarize the requirements.
- Get a proposed implementation plan and actually review it.
- Let it write the code.
- Add your own tests and edge cases.
- Run it, debug, and understand everything.
Our impression is that this round is testing whether you can use AI effectively without turning your brain off.
The AI can handle a lot, but it may over-engineer, miss edge cases, or make assumptions that aren’t actually in the README. So the key seems to be: Understand the spec, guide the AI, review the generated code, write meaningful tests, catch issues, and explain your reasoning under time pressure.