Applied on Indeed and heard back in 2 days. Scheduling was quick and organized. Interview Process HR Screen (~30 min): Background, comp range, role scope. Recruiter was courteous and efficient. Chief Data Scientist (45 min): Deep dive on projects, modeling choices, evaluation metrics, and deployment trade-offs. Fair and technical. Panel (3 hours): Multi-interviewer rotation covering problem framing, experiment design (A/B testing, power/error trade-offs), ML system design, and stakeholder comms. Long session with minimal breaks. Someone knocked on my door during the panel. I paused for ~2 minutes and rejoined immediately. I was told this interruption was the reason I didn’t receive an offer. That rationale felt disproportionate and suggested a high-strung culture.