a recruiter call and a 45 min chat with a DS focused on past projects and how i navigate ambiguity. the onsite was a 4 round loop: decomp, data case, behavioral, and an exec chat. the decomp round is the absolute filter - they throw a massive, vague prompt at you, like optimizing vaccine distribution across a region or fixing a broken national supply chain, and you have to map out the data inputs, ontology, and operational workflow from scratch. the data case was all about dealing with messy, siloed client data and proving you can extract actual value for non-technical stakeholders. the behavioral round was standard - how you handle client pushback and take ownership. I think it felt very different from a standard big tech loop; it’s way less about memorized patterns and more about how you reason through a messy reality and tie the tech back to business outcomes. for prep, i focused on high-level design and practicing how to structure a solution when the ques is intentionally vague. i did a few mocks on Prepfully with palantir strategists for the decomp round and that honestly saved me. it helped me catch a major blind spot - was getting way too lost in the data structures instead of focusing on what the end-user actually needed to make a critical decision. Also went through reddit and blind earlier ngl haha

They really want to get to know you throughout the process, and see how you think about data in different ways and how you solve problems. You have to build a product which takes a long time.