Security Engineering Interview Course

Nail Your Next Security Engineering Interview

4.84

Designed and taught by FAANG+ Security Engineers, this course will give you a foolproof preparation strategy to crack the toughest interviews at FAANG and Tier-1 companies.

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Meet course instructors

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Get all the information about the course and pricing in our live webinar with Q&A.

Students who chose to uplevel with IK got placed at

Pratik Agarwal

Software Development Engineer ll

Suat Mercan

Senior Software Engineer

Anshul Bansal

Software Engineer

Kishore Periassamy

Software Development Engineer

Vinayak Prabhu

System Development Engineer

Kelsi Lakey

Software Engineer

Shrey Shrivastava

Software Development Engineer ll

Aniruddha Tekade

Senior Software Engineer

Abhishek Garai

Sr. Cloud Security Engineer

21,000+

Tech professionals trained

$1.28M

Highest offer received by an IK alum

53%

Average salary hike received by alums

Best suited for

Why choose this course?

Program designed by FAANG+ leads

Covering data structures, algorithms, interview-relevant topics, and career coaching

Individualized teaching and 1:1 help

Technical coaching, homework assistance, solutions discussion, and individual sessions

Mock interviews with Silicon Valley engineers

Live interview practice in real-life simulated environments with FAANG and top-tier interviewers

Personalized feedback

Constructive, structured, and actionable insights for improved interview performance

Career skills development

Resume building, LinkedIn profile optimization, personal branding, and live behavioral workshops

50% Money-Back Guarantee*

If you do well in our course but still don't land a domain-relevant job within the post-program support period, we'll refund 50% of the tuition you paid for the course.*

Next webinar starts in

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Meet your instructors

Our highly experienced instructors are active hiring managers and employees at FAANG+ companies and know exactly what it takes to ace tech and managerial interviews.

Larry Hu

Senior Security Engineer

18+ years experience

A typical week at Interview Kickstart

This is how we structure and organize your interview prep with our high-quality, content-rich course. Our learners devote 10 to 12 hours per week to this course.

Thu

Get foundational content

Get high-quality videos and course material for the upcoming week's live class

Covers fundamentals, interview-relevant topics, and case studies

Attend timed test and review session

Focused group discussions involving learners and the instructor on the assignment's solution

Interview-like drill down into key techniques and design choices

Sun

Attend Online live sessions

Attend 4-hour interactive sessions covering interview-relevant Security Engineering concepts

Each class covers a wide variety of interview problems, including open-ended questions and how to approach these questions

Live feedback from a FAANG+ instructor

Mon-Wed

Practice problems & case studies

Practice concepts taught in live sessions to solve assignment questions

Live doubt-solving with FAANG+ instructors

Learn about the hiring process at various FAANG+ companies

Every day

1:1 access to instructors

Personalized coaching from FAANG+ Cybersecurity instructors

Individualized and detailed attention to your questions

Solution walkthroughs

Security Engineering Course details and curriculum

Data structures and Algorithms

Sorting

Introduction to Sorting
Basics of Asymptotic Analysis and Worst Case & Average Case Analysis
Different Sorting Algorithms and their comparison
Algorithm paradigms like Divide & Conquer, Decrease & Conquer, Transform & Conquer
Presorting
Extensions of Merge Sort, Quick Sort, Heap Sort
Common sorting-related coding interview problems

Recursion

Recursion as a Lazy Manager’s Strategy
Recursive Mathematical Functions
Combinatorial Enumeration
Backtracking
Exhaustive Enumeration & General Template
Common recursion- and backtracking-related coding interview problems

Trees

Dictionaries & Sets, Hash Tables
Modeling data as Binary Trees and Binary Search Tree and performing different operations over them
Tree Traversals and Constructions
BFS Coding Patterns
DFS Coding Patterns
Tree Construction from its traversals
Common trees-related coding interview problems

Graphs

Overview of Graphs
Problem definition of the 7 Bridges of Konigsberg and its connection with Graph theory
What is a graph, and when do you model a problem as a Graph?
How to store a Graph in memory (Adjacency Lists, Adjacency Matrices, Adjacency Maps)
Graphs traversal: BFS and DFS, BFS Tree, DFS stack-based implementation
A general template to solve any problems modeled as Graphs
Graphs in Interviews
Common graphs-related coding interview problems

Dynamic Programming

Dynamic Programming Introduction
Modeling problems as recursive mathematical functions
Detecting overlapping subproblems
Top-down Memorization
Bottom-up Tabulation
Optimizing Bottom-up Tabulation
Common DP-related coding interview problems

System Design

Online Processing Systems

The client-server model of Online processing
Top-down steps for system design interview
Depth and breadth analysis
Cryptographic hash function
Network Protocols, Web Server, Hash Index
Scaling
Performance Metrics of a Scalable System
SLOs and SLAs
Proxy: Reverse and Forward
Load balancing
CAP Theorem
Content Distribution Networks
Cache
Sharding
Consistent Hashing
Storage
Case Studies: URL Shortener, Instagram, Uber, Twitter, Messaging/Chat Services

Batch Processing Systems

Inverted Index
External Sort Merge
K-way External Sort-Merge
Distributed File System
Map-reduce Framework
Distributed Sorting
Case Studies: Search Engine, Graph Processor, Typeahead Suggestions, Recommendation Systems

Stream Processing Systems

Security Engineering

Applied Cryptography

Deep dive into symmetric and asymmetric Cryptography techniques
Discussion on ideal Cryptography outcomes: Confidentiality, Authenticity, Integrity, and Non-repudiation
Detailed analysis of symmetric vs. asymmetric Cryptography
Discussion on interesting interview questions:
What would it take to break RSA?
How can one perform a MITM attack on all HTTPS traffic? Is it even possible?
Explain why the length of the key does matter?
The brain behind Cryptography: Avalanche Effect, Hash Functions, Hash Collision
Deep dive into Public Key Infrastructure and PKI standards
Different methods for authentication: Kerberos, SAML, OAuth 2.0, JSON Web Token
Protocols for enhancing network security: TLS (Transport Layer Security), IPSec, Secure Shell (SSH)

Network Security

Comprehensive coverage of network components – ARP, IP & MAC, Protocols, Firewall, TCP, OSI layers, etc.
Important interview questions on secure Wi-Fi connection, pre-shared key, firewalls and many other network components
How to secure DNS and DHCP servers? Get pro tips on server hardening. Get to know some interesting follow-up questions:
How does DNS name resolution work in networks?
What is the BIND service in linux?
What does the hosts file do in a windows system?
How to detect and respond to intrusions? – Discussion on Intrusion detection system
Solve tough problems: Challenging assignments on DNS poisoning, SYN/ACK flood attack

Cloud Security

Comprehensive coverage of different stages where data needs to be protected:
Data-at-rest
Data-in-transit
Data-in-use
Discussion on most pressing issues with PaaS (cloud): Data security, Integrations, Customisation of legacy systems, Vendor lock-in
Deep dive into common cloud configuration issues: Granting public access to data, disabled logging and monitoring
The interview focused on open-ended assignments and challenging questions:
As a consultant how would you improve client’s cloud security posture?
How would you secure a cloud containerised environment?
Why is tagging important when it comes to cloud environments?
Biggest challenges to security of cloud : Distributed Denial-of-Service attack (DDoS), its types and mitigation strategies
Key principles to keep your cloud secure: logging and monitoring, cloud native security tools like AWS GuardDuty

Application Security

Focus on building a security mindset for developing secure applications
Challenging assignment based on real-life scenarios: Music streaming API security
Deep dive into application security principles: Threat Modeling, OWASP Top 10
Discussion on code reviews questions: Identify security flaws in the given code (most frequently asked in FAANG+)
Case studies on application security flaws:
Link Shortening
IDOR
User-Facing Authentication
Discussion on important security frameworks to keep your application secure
STRIDE
CHIRPS

Security Themed Coding, Code Reviews, Secure System Design, and Security Policies

What are some of the checkpoints and best practices to develop more secure code? Discuss various strategies to write better code:
Data/Input Validation
Output Encoding
Session Management
Access Control
Reducing attack surface and many other checkpoints
Comprehensive coverage of attack vectors and common software vulnerabilities – How to stay updated with latest vulnerabilities?
How does Threat Modeling help with making secure code – A deep dive into three threat modeling techniques
Interview-relevant strategies: Learn to do Attack Tree analysis, a method to model the threats against a system in a graphical easy-to-understand manner
Additional methods to mitigate security risks in code to impress your interviewer:
Code Signing
AppLocker, Code Integrity, and IPE
Code Repository Authentication
Pentest team
Interesting open-ended interview questions:
Why would you use modular design vs. resiliency design?
Tell me how code can be written in an insecure manner.
Is it possible for vulnerabilities to exist if each separate system is secure?

Career Coaching

Interview Strategy and Success

Behavioral Interview Prep

Offers and Negotiation

Support Period

15 mock interviews

Take classes you missed/retake classes/tests

1:1 technical/career coaching

Interview strategy and salary negotiation support

Next webinar starts in

00 DAYS

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Practice and track progress on UpLevel

UpLevel will be your all-in-one learning platform to get you FAANG-ready, with 10,000+ interview questions, timed tests, videos, mock interviews suite, and more.

Mock interviews suite

On-demand timed tests

In-browser online judge

10,000 interview questions

100,000 hours of video explanations

Class schedules & activity alerts

Real-time progress update

11 programming languages

Get upto 15 mock interviews with

hiring managers

What makes our mock Interviews the best:

Hiring managers from Tier-1 companies like Google & Apple

Interview with the best. No one will prepare you better!

Domain-specific Interviews

Practice for your target domain - Security Engineering

Detailed personalized feedback

Identify and work on your improvement areas

Transparent, non-anonymous interviews

Get the most realistic experience possible

More about mock interviews

1. Flexible schedule

Pick timings convenient to you

4. Technical and behavioral interviews

Uplevel your technical and behavioral interview skills

2. Remote interview experience

Mirrors the current format of remote interviews

5. Level-specific interviews

Because an L4 at Google can be quite different from an E7 at Meta

3. Feedback documentation

All the feedback you’ve ever wanted, recorded and documented

6. Interviewer of your choice

Choose based on company and/or domain

Career impact

Our engineers land high-paying and rewarding offers from the biggest tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Netflix.

Abhishek Garai

Sr. Cloud Engineer

Placed at:

Interviewing has always been difficult for me. I always had fear and anxiety of failing, my confidence was low. IK has put together different aspects of interviewing in well defined plan. Live Classes and Practice problems gives you inner confidence of facing the interviews. I have tried reading multiple books on different topics but they are theoretical and doesn't help in interviews. IK takes you to problem solving mode, they do it in very structured pattern.

Ian Hwang

Software Engineer

Placed at:

I attended IK and I've got a lot of knowledge that helped me get into Microsoft. Their Curriculum (algorithms and data structures) is organized very well and explanations are so helpful. And mock interviews and the feedback helped me a lot. It was worth it!

Neetika Srivastava

Software Engineer

Placed at:

I really like how the program is structured and how it caters to different domains. It is really helpful. The patterns that they teach you at Interview Kickstart are really useful because you can apply those patterns to any new problem. Knowing those patterns, you can solve basically any question because you can relate it to problems you have already solved, which gives you confidence.

Chun Wu

Senior Software Engineer

Placed at:

I joined iK after stumbling across it while reviewing some other interview prep materials after doing poorly in an interview at Linkedin. I knew that doing well in these interviews would require dedication and investment of my time - but with so many resources online I didn't have structure. This is what the IK platform provided me.

Shrey Shrivastava

Software development Engineer ll

Placed at:

The Interview Kickstart course is very structured and informative. They teach you about DS and algo fundamentals very thoroughly and also prepare you for the software engineering interview. I really like the live classes by FAANG engineers, and the homework and tests definitely help you toprepare for a real interview. If you have been looking for a bootcamp that prepares you for software engineering interviews, I would say this is definitely the right place to do it.

Sridhar Gandham

Senior Software Engineer

Placed at:

My experience at IK was extremely positive. I was preparing for FAANG companies using the standard techniques that you find on the internet. When I started preparing, there was no structure to the madness. For example, a simple quicksort can be implemented in multiple ways. So solving a medium problem would take me about 30 minutes. The biggest benefit that I got from IK was a clear, structured way of solving problems. After IK, I could solve medium problems in 10 minutes!

How to enroll for the Security Engineering Interview Course?

Learn more about Interview Kickstart and the Security Engineering Interview Course by joining the free webinar hosted by Ryan Valles, co-founder of Interview Kickstart. You can also talk to our program advisors to get additional program-related details.

Next webinar starts in

00 DAYS

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A Free Guide to Kickstart Your Security Engineering Career at FAANG+

From the interview process and career path to interview questions and salary details — learn everything you need to know about Security Engineering careers at top tech companies.

Interview Strategy and Success

Interview Questions

Career Path

Salary and Levels at FAANG

Frequently Asked Questions

Security Engineering Interview Process Outline

The interview process at FAANG+ and other Tier-1 companies for Cyber Security Engineering interviews vary a bit for each company. However, the general structure is as follows:

Initial technical screening:
On-site interview:
1-2 coding rounds
1 Security coding round
1-2 system design rounds
Behavioral round

What to Expect at Security Engineering Interviews?

Recruiter screening:

30-45 min interview with a recruiter. They will ask questions about your resume, light technical questions to gauge your domain knowledge of Security Engineering, and behavioral questions to assess your culture fit at the company.

Initial technical screening:

This usually involves a coding round and a few questions testing your general knowledge of Security topics. The coding questions are typically at an Easy/Medium level on Leetcode.

On-site: 4-5 Rounds:

Each round is 30 – 60 minutes long.
1-2 general coding rounds: Depending on the total years of experience, candidates go through 1-2 coding (DSA-based) rounds. The questions are usually LC easy/medium.
One security coding round: In these rounds, candidates could be asked to review a code snippet to find vulnerabilities it contains. Alternatively, they could be asked some security-themed coding questions focusing on text parsing and manipulation, basic data structures, and simple logic flows.
1-2 system design rounds: Candidates are asked to design systems to secure various applications. The solution is evaluated on all aspects: network, system, application, and information security. Usually, the discussion leads to several conceptual questions on Networking, OS, Cryptography, Malware, Digital Forensics, etc. For candidates having <5 years of experience, the design round is often replaced by a core Security understanding Round of Medium/High Difficulty.
Behavioral round: To test for cultural fit and check your leadership and communication skills.

Security Engineering Interview Questions

Practicing Cyber Security interview questions and answers is key to nailing your Cyber Security interview. Want to gauge your Cyber Security Engineer interview preparation levels? See if you can answer these Cyber Security Engineering interview questions:

Security Engineering Coding Questions

Find the single element that does not appear thrice in a given array of integers.

For a given number, find the number of ones in its binary representation. Given nums=[0, 1, 3] return 2

How would you test for a loop in a linked list?

How would you reverse a linked list?

Sort an array using bubble sort and quicksort

Reverse a string without using any built-in functions.

Domain-specific Security Engineering Interview Questions

How do you ensure that a server is secure?

How do you differentiate between symmetric and asymmetric encryption?

What Is SSL encryption?

What do you mean by port scanning?

How frequently do you perform patch management?

Can you reset a password-protected BIOS configuration?

What is the difference between Black Box Testing and White Box Testing?

What is forward secrecy?

What is ARP poisoning? Can you explain with an example?

What do you mean by SQL injection?

Do you know what XXE is?

Differentiate XSS from CSRF.

What is a server-side request forgery attack?

What is the same-origin policy and CORS?

Security Engineering Interview Questions on Behavioral Skills

Why do you want to build a career in Cyber Security?

What are your greatest strengths and accomplishments?

What is the most challenging project you encountered on your learning journey?

What, according to you, are the most required skills in a security engineer?

What does the job of a security engineer entail, as per your understanding?

Why our company and why this role? Which of our company’s principles is your greatest strength?

Describe your most complex project.

How would you prioritize work and tasks in a program? Tell me about a time when you had to deal with competing priorities.

Describe a conflict you had with your manager or team member. How did you solve it?

Security Engineering Career Path

Cyber Security Engineers are the first line of defense a company has against unauthorized access and security threats. It is clear that a robust and diverse skill set is a necessity to be a Cyber Security Engineer at any Tier-1 company. We’ll now discuss about the career progression and role of a Cyber Security Engineer.

Security Engineering Job Roles and Responsibilities

Even though the specific responsibilities of Security Engineers may vary for each company, the key day-to-day responsibilities of Cyber Security jobs includes:

Perform vulnerability and risk assessments, including ethical hacking, to detect security loopholes

Devise the necessary Security policy

Define, detect and prevent security issues at the Application, System, and Network layers

Contribute to building security tools and infrastructure to analyze, deploy, and manage security controls

Design, develop, implement, and test security solutions with cost, performance, and reliability in mind

Design computer security architecture and develop detailed Cyber Security designs

Prepare and document standard operating procedures and protocols

Configure and troubleshoot security infrastructure devices

Develop technical solutions and new security tools to help mitigate security vulnerabilities and automate repeatable tasks

Ensure that the company knows as much as possible, as quickly as possible, about security incidents

Write comprehensive reports including assessment-based findings, outcomes, and propositions for further system security enhancement

The educational qualifications needed to become a Security Engineer include:

A bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, or another related field.

Expert knowledge of Cyber Security and related subjects and a fair amount of previous work experience.

Understanding of scalable systems, applications, networks, encryption standards, secure coding practices, and types of threats: detecting and preventing them

Knowledge of formulating security policies, skilled in a high-level language/scripting language. Proficiency in Python, C++, Java, Ruby, Node, Go, and/or Power Shell

Some certifications like CISSP, GIAC, CISA, and CISM may be useful

Experience with Firewalls (functionality and maintenance), Office 365 Security, VSX, and Endpoint Security

Great awareness of Cyber Security trends and hacking techniques. Ability to work under pressure in a fast-paced environment. Strong attention to detail with an analytical mind and outstanding problem-solving skills.

Experience implementing security solutions that resolve security and business risk trade-offs and an understanding of cryptography, web service frameworks, mobile application architectures, service architectures, networking, and communication protocols.

Career Roadmap for an Security Engineer

Amazon Technical Security Engineer Career Path

L4 – Security Engineer → L5 -Sr. Security Engineer→ L6 – Security Architect → L7 – Principal Engineer → L8 – Sr. Principal Engineer → L9 – Scientist

Apple Technical Security Engineer Career Path

L2 → L3 → L4 → L5 (at this level, the people are generally known in the industry) → L6

Despite the levels, the career path is quite fluid. The transition is from writing code to designing architecture/framework and then to cross-team collaboration and designing a complete system or platform architecture.

Microsoft Technical Security Engineer Career Path

61 – Entry Level → 62 → 63 → 64 → 65 – Principal Engineer

Security Engineer Salary and Levels at FAANG

The average entry-level Security Engineer salary in the US is $90,709, but the salary range typically falls between $77,510 and $108,871.

The average salary for a Security Engineer in the US is $124,527. The average additional cash compensation for a Security Engineer is $20,347. Finally, the average total compensation for a Security Engineer is $144,874

The estimated total pay for a Cyber Security Engineer is $109,098 per year in the US, with an average salary of $101,548 per year.

Cyber Security Salaries by Role

Cyber Security professionals are well compensated for their skills, even at the entry-level. As you gain experience and move into more advanced roles, salaries expectedly go up. To give you an idea of what’s possible, here’s a look at the average salary of some high-paying Cyber Security jobs in the US. (Source: glassdoor.com)

Ethical Hacker: $101,165
Penetration Tester: $102,405
Security Engineer: $111,691
Cyber Security Manager: $132,180
Security Architect: $153,751
Chief Information Security Officer: $170,928

Facebook Security Engineer Salary

The average annual salary of a Security Engineer at Facebook is $172,333 with $86k as the lowest known and $260k as the highest known Facebook Security Engineer salary.

Amazon Security Engineer Salary

The average annual salary of a Security Engineer at Amazon is $309k with a $175k base, $24k stocks, and a $110k bonus, as of June 2022. It also varies quite a bit with levels.

Apple Security Engineer Salary

The average annual salary of a Security Engineer at Apple is $171,805 with $86k as the lowest known and $260k as the highest known Apple Security Engineer salary as of June 2022.

Netflix Security Engineer Salary

The average annual salary of a Security Engineer at Netflix is $158,015 with $141,267 as the lowest known and $176,750 as the highest known Netflix Security Engineer salary.

Google Security Engineer Salary

The average annual salary of a entry-level Security Engineer at Google is $156,731 with $79k as the lowest known and $258k as the highest known Google Security Engineer salary.

Salary Details of Security Engineers at Other Tier-1 Companies

Knowing the Security Engineer’s salary details for other tier-1 companies can help you evaluate your options better. We’ve curated the salaries associated with each of these companies at different levels:

Uber: The average annual salary of a Security Engineer at Uber is $162,253 with $82k as the lowest known and $267k as the highest known Uber Security Engineer salary.
Twitter: The average annual salary of a Security Engineer at Twitter is $147,841 with $129,639 as the lowest known and $168,599 as the highest known Twitter Security Engineer salary.
LinkedIn: The average annual salary of a Security Engineer at LinkedIn is $128,593 with $103,500 as the lowest known and $159,771 as the highest known LinkedIn Security Engineer salary.

FAQs on Security Engineering Interview Course

Do I need to learn programming to crack FAANG+ Security Engineering Interviews?

The programming skill is a must for many Cyber Security job roles. Some of those job roles include but are not limited to Application Security Engineer, Security Engineer, Cloud Security Engineer, and Code Reviewer.

Many organizations, when hiring Security Engineers, have coding and system design rounds. If you want to work for FAANG+ companies, you are expected to solve easy- to medium-level coding problems, depending on your role, level, and experience.

Why do companies check coding skills for Security Engineering roles?

Algorithmic problem solving is one of the easiest ways to check how you navigate through a challenging situation. You also need to know how to code well enough to keep systems secure. As a security professional, you are expected to automate/script processes and may be expected to review the codes developers have written.

What is Security Engineering in Cyber Security?

A Software Security Engineer plans, designs, develops, implements, and maintains their company’s software security strategy through secure network solutions that defend against threats/attacks.

Software Security Engineers use various software security testing methods and techniques, monitor the systems and ensure they are working properly and up to date. Security Engineers can pinpoint any potential security threats and plan and prepare before any such threats become relevant.

What skills does a Security Engineer need?

High-Level Language/Scripting Language
Knowledge scalable systems, applications, and networks
Encryption Standards
Secure Coding practices
Types of threats, detecting and preventing them
Formulation of Security Policies

How to become a Cyber Security Engineer?

To become a Cyber Security Engineer, you should have a Bachelor’s degree in systems engineering, computer science, IT, or a related field. You should also have 2-5 years of work experience in Security Engineering and be proficient with programming languages and tools related to Cyber Security.

Nail Your Next Security Engineering Interview

Register for webinar

It's Free

Next webinar starts in

00

DAYS

:

00

HR

:

00

MINS

:

00

SEC

Meet course instructors

Start Learning

Students who chose to uplevel with IK got placed at

21,000+

Tech professionals trained

$1.28M

Highest offer received by an IK alum

53%

Average salary hike received by alums

Best suited for

Why choose this course?

Program designed by FAANG+ leads

Individualized teaching and 1:1 help

Mock interviews with Silicon Valley engineers

Personalized feedback

Career skills development

50% Money-Back Guarantee*

Register for webinar

It's Free

Next webinar starts in

00

DAYS

:

00

HR

:

00

MINS

:

00

SEC

Meet your instructors

Larry Hu

A typical week at Interview Kickstart

Thu

Sun

Mon-Wed

Every day

Security Engineering Course details and curriculum

Sorting

Recursion

Trees

Graphs

Dynamic Programming

Online Processing Systems

Batch Processing Systems

Stream Processing Systems

Applied Cryptography

Network Security

Cloud Security

Application Security

Security Themed Coding, Code Reviews, Secure System Design, and Security Policies

Interview Strategy and Success

Behavioral Interview Prep

Offers and Negotiation

15 mock interviews

Take classes you missed/retake classes/tests

1:1 technical/career coaching

Interview strategy and salary negotiation support

Register for webinar

It's Free

Next webinar starts in

00

DAYS

: