This guide turns the same rubric interviewers use in this kit into a structured study plan. You'll see every topic, how each one is probed as you climb from Junior (IC2) to Lead (IC4), what a strong answer sounds like, and exactly what to study on which day — so a month of focused evenings gets you interview-ready instead of doom-scrolling random blog posts.
The interview map shows how each of the 7 topics is assessed — and how the bar rises from owning a screen to driving a team's architecture.
Animated explainers for the concepts that trip people up: ARC retain cycles, actor isolation, data flow, the frame budget.
Don't just re-read answers — flashcards make you retrieve them, with spaced repetition and a streak so the right cards come back at the right time.
Every iOS interview in this kit probes the same 7 topics. What changes with seniority isn't the topic — it's the altitude. A junior explains how one screen works; a lead explains how they keep a whole team's code consistent. Tap any cell to see what's actually asked and what a strong answer sounds like.
| Topic | IC2 · iOS SE Owns a screen |
IC3 · Senior Owns features |
IC4 · Lead Owns the team's bar |
|---|
Interviewers don't grade pass/fail — they place each answer on a 5-level rubric, then average per topic into a radar chart. Knowing the rubric is half the battle: the gap between “Meets” and “Strong” is almost always naming the trade-off and the edge case, not knowing more facts.
Each topic below opens to: why it matters, how the bar rises IC2 → Lead, an interactive explainer for the concept people most often fumble, and links into this kit's deep prep notes. Don't memorise — play with the visuals until the model clicks, then practise saying it out loud.
Re-reading the model answer feels productive, then fades by morning. Retrieving it from memory — forcing the answer out before you flip — is what actually sticks, and it's exactly what the interview tests. These cards distil the question bank into recall prompts. Grade yourself honestly: cards you miss come back sooner, cards you nail drift out to a week. Five minutes a day beats a weekend cram.
Twenty focused sessions of ~2 hours, building from fundamentals to Lead-level. Each day pairs study (this kit's prep notes + the explainers above) with practice out loud — because the interview tests whether you can say it, not just recognise it. Every day links straight to the learning material it covers — the exact prep-deck topic and, on mock days, the interview to run. Tick days off; your progress saves in this browser.
You've done the studying. These are the habits that turn knowledge into a “Strong” on the rubric — how to structure an answer, where the easy points are, and the red flags that quietly sink candidates.
Repeat the question in your words and state one assumption. “So we’re fetching a paginated list, offline-capable — yes?” Buys thinking time and shows judgement.
Narrate the path before the detail. Interviewers grade your reasoning, not just the destination. Silence reads as stuck.
This is the Meets→Strong lever. For every choice, say what you didn’t pick and why. “Struct here for value semantics; a class if I needed shared identity.”
Surface the failure mode before they ask. “The risk here is a retain cycle / a dropped frame / a flaky test — so I’d…”. That’s an Exceeds signal.
sleep() to “wait”; sprinkling @MainActor / DispatchQueue.main as a cargo-cult.sleep-based async tests; “QA covers that”.The fastest way to calibrate is to sit on the other side of the table. Open the interview for your target level, answer every question out loud, and grade yourself against the strong-answer markers.