Citi iOS Developer Interview Experience — Irving, TX 💻
I applied for an iOS developer role at Citi through a recruiter, and the entire process wrapped up in just 2 days.
📞 Interview Process
Two phone rounds, both technical:
- Swift & iOS fundamentals
- Real-world problem solving
- Discussion around my past projects
The interviewers were friendly but straight to the point.
What They Were Testing
Citi wasn’t trying to trick me. They wanted to know:
- Can you explain your thought process?
- Do you understand fundamentals?
- Can you write maintainable iOS code?
- Have you actually built apps?
It felt more like a discussion with another engineer than a typical interview.
Questions Asked
Here are some of the questions I remember:
- What is protocol-oriented programming?
How do we use it? Why do we prefer it in Swift? When have you used it? - Difference between class and struct?
When would you choose one over the other? - How does ARC work?
What causes memory leaks and how do you avoid them? - Explain delegation vs closures vs NotificationCenter.
- How would you design a simple networking layer in Swift?
- How do you handle errors from an API call in your app?
- Tell me about a bug you struggled with and how you fixed it.
For POP, I explained how I use protocols to:
- Abstract services
- Enable dependency injection
- Make code testable
- Avoid deep inheritance
They were clearly more interested in real usage than definitions.
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💬 Discussion Around My Work
We also talked about:
- Apps I’ve built
- Architecture choices
- Trade-offs I made
- What I’d improve if I rewrote them today
This part mattered a lot. They wanted to see ownership and clarity.
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