The "Gap" in Engineering Prep
We’ve all been there. You spend three months mastering Dijkstra’s algorithm and Inverting Binary Trees just to pass a technical interview. Then, on Day 1 of the actual job, your boss asks you to:
- Trace a bug across five different microservices.
- Refactor a messy module without breaking the API contract.
- Debug a failing CI/CD pipeline.
None of your interview prep helped you with that.
My co-founder David and I realized that while there are 3,000+ problems on LeetCode for "Algorithm puzzles," there was nowhere to practice Real Software Engineering. So, we built Real-SWE.
What is "Real" Software Engineering?
In a real codebase, you aren't working in a single solution.py file with 10 lines of code. You’re working with modules, assets, and unfamiliar architectures.
We built Real-SWE to mirror that reality. We currently offer 95+ problems across four tracks:
- Backend: Building APIs and handling server-side logic.
- Frontend: Managing state and responsive UIs in complex - environments.
- Infrastructure: The stuff that usually scares people—deployments and scaling.
- Data Engineering: Turning raw data into actual pipelines.
The Feature I'm Most Proud Of: "Review the PR"
Ask any Senior Engineer: You spend more time reading code than writing it. Yet, most interview prep platforms only ask you to write a single function from scratch.
One of the hardest parts of a real job is the Pull Request (PR) process. You’re handed a diff of 100+ lines across four files, and you have to spot the architectural flaw, the hidden bug, or the N+1 query before it hits production.
We built a dedicated Code Review Track that lets you step into the shoes of a maintainer by reviewing curated, real-world Pull Requests from popular open-source libraries. You aren't hunting for "fake" bugs in a vacuum; you’re analyzing actual multi-file diffs from production history, learning to spot architectural trade-offs, performance bottlenecks, and edge cases exactly as they appeared in the wild. It’s the fastest way to master the "Senior" mindset of reasoning through a complex codebase before you even land the role.
It’s the first tool that actually lets you practice being a Senior Reviewer instead of just a "coder." You walk into your interview ready to talk about code quality, dependency injection, and trade-offs because you’ve already "reviewed" their actual codebase.
The Tech Stack
For the curious, we kept it modern and fast:
- Frontend: Next.js 15
- Backend: FastAPI & Postgres
- Auth/Payments: Clerk & Stripe
Languages Supported: Python, JavaScript, Java, and C++.
Why 95 Problems is Better Than 3,000
We know we don’t have the volume of the "big guys" yet. But we’d rather have 95 thoughtful, multi-file problems that teach you how to be a Senior Engineer than 3,000 variations of "Find the Kth element in a list."
I’d love your feedback!
We just launched a Leaderboard and we’re starting to partner with universities for coding challenges.
My question to the Dev.to community: What is the hardest "real world" bug you've ever had to fix? I want to turn the best stories into practice problems on the site.
Check it out here: real-swe.com
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