About NerdWallet 
Core Values 
Life at NerdWallet 
Supporting our Nerds 
Diversity and Inclusion Program at NerdWallet 
Engineering Culture at NerdWallet 
Customer Comes First 
Work/Life Balance 
Impressive Team Members 
Product-driven 
Start-to-finish Ownership 
Wears Many Hats 
EQ > IQ 
Our Tech Stack 
Team Members 
Our Internship Program 
Interviewing at NerdWallet 
 

 
About NerdWallet 
 
Mission 
 
We're on a mission to provide clarity for all of life's financial decisions. Our tools and advice make it easy to 
expertly pay off debt, choose the best financial products and services (think credit cards and insurance) and 
tackle major life goals, like buying a house and saving for retirement. 

Core Values 
 
Consumer Company Team Self  
We believe that doing what's best for consumers is the right strategy. Putting company and team goals before 
our own allows us to collaborate with greater trust and effectiveness. It's the fastest path to success, collectively 
and individually. 
 
Drivers Before Solutions  
Figure out what the most important thing to do is, then do it. Solve the right problem by addressing the root 
cause, not just symptoms. It takes a thoughtful and strategic approach to unlock step-function growth.  
 
Candid & Constructive 
We are all in the same boat, racing towards a distant island. We must row together, coach each other, and 
communicate effortlessly in order to maximize our odds of success. Candid, open conversations help keep us 
on the same page. Constructive feedback builds relationships by focusing on what’s working now and what can 
be improved — which will help us overcome roadblocks faster. 
 
Relentless Self-Improvement 
Continuous improvement compounds quickly - for yourself and for the company. A growth mindset is your best 
tool for tackling the tough and ambiguous challenges ahead. Approach each day with the humility to recognize 
your weaknesses and a commitment to developing yourself and others.  
 
Hypothesize, Build, Measure, Learn  
Get to a good hypothesis, and get right to work iterating and tweaking. The faster we know whether or not 
something works, the more we can learn. The goal is constant improvement, if it means we make some 
mistakes along the way. 

 
 

 
Life at NerdWallet 
 
It's a fact: People do their best work when they're supported and challenged. So we're fostering a culture that 
we're happy to be part of, every day. 

Make a difference​   Love your team  

We always put our users first — because when their  We're growing fast, but we're growing wisely. From 
needs drive our goals, we can really dig in and  domain experts to scrappy go-getters, we're 
make a big difference. With careful collaboration  thoughtfully building our teams to include talented 
and thoughtful insights, we're creating experiences  people that bring different levels of experience and 
that help people do everything from find the right  expertise to the mix. 
credit card to afford a family vacation. 

Learn and grow  

Break the mold​   Sure, we have the typical startup perks. But more 
We've only scratched the surface of what we want  than that we're invested in our Nerds' present and 
to achieve. Whether it's building a financial advice  future success. Things like quarterly hackathons, 
app from the ground up or creating infographics  exclusive NerdTalks, and management workshops 
and content that make complex topics easy to  help us grow both personally and professionally. 
grasp, our Nerds are finding new ways to disrupt 
the financial industry. 
 

Supporting our Nerds 

 
Why Nerds Work Here:​​ We’re  NerdsPayItForward #NPF:​​ ​Our   
on a mission to help people  employee-led volunteer  NerdWallet Hackathons:​​ ​Our 
make the best possible financial  program, NerdsPayItForward,  company-wide hackathons give 
decisions. Nerd culture is all  gives Nerds a chance to reach  Nerds from every team a 
about working together to make  out to our neighbors in the  chance to bring their exciting, 
a difference, putting consumers  Tenderloin to give back in any  creative ideas to life. Stepping 
first and building something that  way we can. Nerds have  away from the day-to-day, 
we all believe in. We’re serious  volunteered at more than 40  Nerds get to make a real impact 
about the happiness and  events, raised thousands of  on a huge range of projects, 
well-being of our Nerds, and  dollars for local and national  from shipping product to 
fuel our brains with NerdTalks  organizations and given  influencing roadmaps to 
speaker series, professional  community grants to select  creating awesome nerdy tools 
development trainings and  organizations including Project  that make our work lives better. 
$500 learning stipends. We are  Homeless Connect, St.  Great ideas have a chance to be 
proud to be recognized as a  Anthony’s, the Tenderloin  realized, all in the interest of 
Top Place to Work by the Bay  Neighborhood Development  helping consumers and living 
Area News Group and the SF  Corporation, Meals on Wheels,  our core values of relentless self 
Business Times.  Glide Memorial Church,  improvement and putting others 
  StreetCode, Junior  first 
Achievement. 
 
Diversity and Inclusion Program at NerdWallet 
 
Mission: To support sourcing of underrepresented minority talent and to foster an inclusive work environment 
that celebrates all forms of diversity. 
 
We currently have the below Employee Resource Groups* at NerdWallet: 
● Black Nerds Network (BNN)  
● NerdOut - A place for LBGTQIA Nerds and allies to support each other and plan fun events together.  
● NerdWomen 
● LatiNerds 
● Women in Engineering 
 
*Employee Resource Groups are voluntary, employee-led groups that serve as a resource for employees by 
fostering a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned with organizational mission, values, and goals. 
 
NerdWallet in the News 
 
● NerdWallet’s Brand Promise: Our Passion Is Your Life Well Spent 
● Meet NerdWallet’s 5 Newest Executives 
● Forty Under 40: Tim Chen, NerdWallet 
● Our first TV commercial! 
● NerdWallet honored by the SF Business Times as a #1 Best Place to Work 
● NerdWallet Named a 2018 Career-Launching Company by Wealthfront 
● NerdWallet Announces Acquisition of aboutLife 
● NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen Joins NFCC Board 
● Tapan Bhat Joins NerdWallet as First Chief Product Officer 
● Scorching FinTech Market Keeps Attracting New Players As NerdWallet Raises $64 Million 
● The $520 Million Company That's Solving All Your Financial Needs 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
Engineering Culture at NerdWallet 
 
 
Customer Comes First  We arrange volunteering events through our 
 
community service group and field company teams 
One of our core company values is “Consumer, 
Company, Team, Self,” and we put a premium on  for basketball, soccer, softball, and even cornhole. 
consumer-first solutions.  We have other employee groups like NerdOut who 
  provide a community and host on-site events for our 
Building a profitable business and doing right by  LGBTQ Nerds and NerdWomen who contribute to 
your customers are not mutually exclusive. Our  the mentorship and growth of our female Nerds. 
CEO, Tim, started the company with the belief that if 
he helped users make better financial decisions,  Impressive Team Members 
revenue would follow. Our content team is the   
embodiment of that belief. While our editors and  NerdWallet engineers have both the depth and the 
writers often know who our partners are, they do  breadth necessary to develop complex technical 
not know the terms of those relationships. Their  solutions in their own domain while understanding 
objective is to help the user make the best possible 
the broader context into which those solutions fit. 
decision, understanding that every user has a 
unique set of circumstances. Sometimes, the best   
decision is to work with a non-partner or to do  We have an open culture of sharing and 
nothing at all. By guiding users to the best possible  collaboration that encourages learning from one 
decision, we build trust and a long-term relationship  another. Engineers are readily available to help 
with the consumer. This provides the foundation for  each other in a variety of ways, from our supportive 
our $100M+ profitable business and drives the  #engineering Slack channel to our platform teams 
understanding that the best personal finance  running live support on-call, to lunchtime 
solutions are inherently customer-first.  conversations about an engineer’s latest vim 
Work/Life Balance  revelation. We have thriving frontend and backend 
  engineering groups with engineers who geek out 
You can’t be at your best if you’re not taking care of  over things like the finer points of site performance 
yourself and your family.  and the differing architectures for a data store. 
  Participation happens at all levels, from our VP of 
Teams have flexible working hours and regularly  engineering giving a tech talk on the architecture of 
hold offsites and other social events to take a break  Pac-Man to our new grads giving presentations to 
from day-to-day responsibilities. We also have an  the engineering team about the refactor that they 
unlimited PTO policy. Most engineers are on-call  worked on. NerdWallet engineers lift each other up 
monthly, though it’s pretty quiet. There are still  while continually raising the bar for themselves. We 
occasions where teams have to make a big push,  believe that we have an obligation to be better 
but these are the exception and not the rule.  tomorrow than we were today. 
personal finance problems through the lens of 
Product-driven  technology. That means developing systems that 
  can generate insightful recommendations for 
Technology does not exist in isolation.  millions of users; that means working with complex 
  data science models to predict how much money a 
At NerdWallet, we don’t see technology as an end  user will need in 20 years and how to help them get 
unto itself, we see it as a means by which we help  there; that means rethinking mobile apps and 
our users make financial decisions with clarity. Our  understanding what personal finance decisions 
engineering team is excited about solving hard  need solving in the moment. Ultimately, it means 
developing complex technologies for solving real  end engineers who make sure that the client SDKs 
world problems.  are easy to use and running efficiently. We want 
engineers who solve problems at all levels, from the 
  initial product conception to the maintenance and 
Start-to-finish Ownership  monitoring in production. We think this is important 
  for a couple of reasons: 
Ownership is more than completing tickets.   
  1. The less isolated engineers are in their particular 
At NerdWallet, ownership is about designing and  disciplines, the better they will be at solving 
implementing the right technology for the right  problems for our members and for other engineers. 
problem and that requires engineers to be involved  2. We will never have enough people to do all the 
throughout the entire process. Engineers are  work we have. Being multi-disciplined (or being 
typically aligned to a product or feature in order to  willing to try) means that you’ll be working on all 
help them build domain expertise around the issues  sorts of problems. 
that face their team and participate at all levels of  3. The skills we need today may not be the same as 
product development. They watch user research  the skills we need tomorrow. As we evolve, we want 
videos to understand how our users think about the  our engineers to evolve with us. 
problems facing them, and work on requirements 
with PMs and designers to make sure that we’re  EQ > IQ 
solving the most important problems first.   
  The best solutions come from a variety of 
Engineers also sit in on design reviews to give  perspectives. 
feedback to designers and understand how they   
have approached the problem, and review metrics  Inside NerdWallet, engineers are full participants in 
with PMs to understand how well the feature  the problem solving and product development 
actually solves user problems. They advocate for  process. Engineering supports a wide variety of 
new features during sprint planning and then start  disciplines at NerdWallet and our most successful 
the whole process over again, because ownership  engineers know how to work with a team of diverse 
means caring about the work you did and  people to deliver the best solution for our members. 
continually making it better.   
Outside NerdWallet, we realize that our users come 
Wears Many Hats  from a wide variety of backgrounds and financial 
  situations. Having a better understanding of these 
While we do have specialists across our entire  perspectives and being able to empathize with them 
engineering organization, we want a large part of  enables our engineers to better design and 
our team to have breadth and be able to jump in on  implement solutions that serve the widest number of 
a wide variety of problems.  people 
   
We want front end engineers that like to tweak APIs 
and update backing data models. We want back 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Our Tech Stack 

Web - Node, React, Python, PostgreSQL 

Mobile - React Native, Swift (iOS) / Java (Android) 

Team Members 
 
15 Designers 
100 Engineers (across Core Development, QA, DevOps, and 
Analytics) 
30 Product Managers 
See what our Engineers are up to... 
 
Engineering Blogs 
 
● Building Engineering Careers at NerdWallet 
● Building a product platform at NerdWallet – Part 1 
● Building a product platform at NerdWallet – Part 2 
● Understanding React Component Performance 
● To build great products, let the data do the talking 
● A Peek into Women Engineering at NerdWallet 
● Speeding Up NerdWallet 
● Revisiting Yarn and npm 
● Working at a Startup as a New College Grad 
 
 
Engineering Intern Blogs 
 
● Shepherd: Automating Cross-repo Code Changes 
● Frontend Application Performance Feedback at NerdWallet 
● Winter 2018 Internship at Nerdwallet 
● Life as an Intern at NerdWallet 
● Interning at NerdWallet — Fall 2017 
 

 
Our Internship Program 

NerdWallet has an extensive internship program that fosters an environment of growth, new perspective, and 
fresh ideas. 
 
Our goal with our intern program is to strategically build out a pipeline of top level talent to eventually join us full 
time. We also make sure our interns gain exposure and learn from our more senior engineers by having both a 
senior manager and technical mentor to ensure they are set up for success. 
 
A few things to highlight about our Internship program: 
1. Project Scope: ​Our interns work on high impact, meaningful projects and are treated like full time 
employees. 
2. Teams​​: Interns are matched to a team based on their preferences. 
3. Exposure to Leadership:​​ Our interns have access to our leadership team through 1:1’s with our 
CEO and weekly lunch & learns for them to learn about different leaders and their teams. 
 
More information about our program: 
● Nerdings are what we call our interns 🤓 
● Program break down: 
○ Duration​ - 12 week program 
○ Mentorship​ - Our interns have both a senior manager and technical mentor to ensure they are set 
up for success 
○ Social Events​ - We’ve gone to Giant’s games, escape rooms, bay cruises and more 
■ Intern only: Social events for interns to get to know each other 
■ Intern + full-time Nerds: Social events for interns to bond with managers / team members 
outside of the office 
■ NerdWallet Events: Company wide events during your internship 
○ Personal Finance Sessions: ​Personal Finance deep dives into topics of interest with experts. 
○ Evaluations​ - Formalized feedback between intern and manager at the midpoint and end of 
internship before they go back to school 
Intern Benefits: 
● 1-on-1 time and mentorship opportunities with senior leadership outside of your direct team 
● Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily with ranging cuisines, onsite coffee bar and weekly happy hours 
● Company sponsored intern events, ranging from social activities to leadership speaker series 
● Volunteer opportunities to give back to the local community 
● Flexible hours, competitive pay and housing stipend 

  
Interviewing at NerdWallet 
 
During your interview, you’ll meet your potential future teammates, learn more about NerdWallet and our culture, 
and be given the opportunity to showcase the best of your abilities. Throughout the process you will have 2 
technical slots covering​ general web concepts,​ ​code construction practices and cleanliness, and your 
methodical approach to thinking through problems, solutions, and edge cases. The third and final step will be a 
behavioral interview revolving around our core values with one of our engineering managers. 
 
Interview Prep: 
 
We recommend brushing up on your computer science fundamentals prior to the interview as you will be asked 
a mix of conceptual and coding questions. You will also have the opportunity to ask your interviewer questions 
and learn more about the technical challenges our engineers are solving for. 
 
A couple of tips during your time here:  
● We’d love to see you clearly explain your solutions, and your thought processes towards them. We try to 
design our interview questions to see how you work through unknowns. We also want to see you able to 
exchange ideas and collaborate with your interviewer, including taking feedback. 
● You’ll definitely have to learn new things on the job, and we love evidence that you’ll pick up things fast. 
Don’t worry if you get stuck; that’s bound to happen when exploring new territory. Be honest with your 
interviewer and see if you can talk through where you’re stuck. Listen for hints they might be giving you. 
 
I would also recommend thinking through the below interview questions, keeping in mind our company core 
values: 
 
● Why are you interested in working for NerdWallet?  
○ Are you passionate about our mission?  
■ The team would love to learn more about what motivates you. 
● Be prepared for behavioral interview questions. Asking these types of questions helps the interviewers 
better understand how you might respond to different situations, based on past experiences and 
learnings. 
○ Tell me about a time you...  
○ Describe a situation where you… 
○ Give a specific example of when… 
● What are your own areas for improvement? 
 
 
Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have additional questions. Good luck!