Cursor paid project day interview

Round 3 of 4 · 2 questions reported

See the whole loop
Length
480 min
Format
A realistic task in a slice of Cursor's actual codebase, scoped and built by you over about a working day
They grade
Finding your way in the codebase, scoping, a working core, code quality, and judgment with AI output (rejecting and checking what it writes)
AI use
AI is encouraged, including Cursor itself
Heads-up
This is the deciding round. Pasting AI output you do not understand is the quickest way to fail. Senior candidates sometimes get a take-home of similar size instead.

Questions Cursor asks in this round 2

  • Debug a codebase then propose long-term fixesCodingYou inherit a small order service: an inventory that holds stock for orders, a pricing module, and the order service that ties them together. Support tickets say stock…
  • Speculative decoding for faster generationCodingImplement speculative decoding: a small draft model proposes tokens and the large model verifies them, accepting matching runs to save forward passes. Reported on 1point3acres'…