What candidates say the round looked like, summarised in our words, each linked to where it came from. Stripe hasn’t confirmed these details unless the source says “Official page”.
The candidate called the AI programming round ‘a bit iffy’. They wrote their own approach instead of asking the model to solve it, listed edge cases and had the model add more, handled the ambiguous parts, and reviewed the generated code in detail while explaining it. That care cost time: they finished only about 1.5 of 3 parts. They still got the hiring manager invite within a day. In the integration round the same day the interviewer said people who pass usually finish 3 parts.
AI could write code · Task: Build from a spec · Source: Reddit thread
Onsite · October 2026
Answering a candidate preparing for the virtual onsite, someone who had sat it said the AI round has the same shape as the other rounds but is much longer. You barely write code yourself: the work is prompting the assistant and then explaining the code it generated to the interviewer.
Intern loop, second stage: two 45-minute rounds with a 30-minute break, an API integration round and then the AI round. In the AI round the candidate got a problem statement and could use an LLM freely to write the code, with the same five-part, step-by-step structure as the other rounds. Even though the AI wrote code, they had to explain the decisions made during the chat. They had taken it lightly and found it the hardest round of the loop, but passed it and moved on to a 30-minute hiring manager round.
AI could write code · Task: Build from a spec · Source: Reddit thread
Onsite · October 2026
Passed this round
Intern · 60 min
Off-campus intern loop: online assessment, a technical screen, then a virtual onsite of two 60-minute rounds. The second onsite round was the AI exercise, built as a chain of tasks that get harder, each one building on the last. The candidate finished 4 of 5 parts. They said both onsite rounds felt closer to real engineering than a classic coding interview: reading unfamiliar code, working from requirements and building step by step mattered more than algorithms. They cleared the technical rounds and were turned down after the final manager conversation.
Advice from someone who had taken the round: use the assistant’s plan mode and have it propose changes first. The AI tended to write overly complex code, so after its plan they told it to simplify the logic. You can use it as much as you like, as long as you understand everything it writes, because the interviewer will ask you to review the code and point out missing edge cases or flaws.
The candidate had just taken Stripe’s new AI interview, having done Meta’s AI round earlier in the year. In Stripe’s version you may use the AI models built into HackerRank to solve a harder problem than a classic coding round. They said it felt nothing like LeetCode and more like a test of how you actually work day to day.