Received an email expressing interest in a role after a review of my github contributions. Proceeded to do a phone screen, which then led to a semi-technical screen with the same HR person. Finally we did another call a few days later, same HR person, where the specific role was discussed along with details regarding compensation. At the time of the interview I had a VP title at a SaaS company located outside of Washington DC. During the interview process I noted that the questions seemed geared towards someone who was rather junior, but the HR person indicated that many people thought similarly, and the process had been working well for them. After three rounds of calls I expressed skepticism that the role was appropriate for someone with my experience. At that time I was then told the compensation would be 1/3 of what I was making, which was actually less than I had made immediately after college. I expressed that the process appeared to have been a waste of time, suggested they rework it, and ended the interaction.

Started with a recruiter screen where the whole point is just checking if you actually care about their mission and the real-world impact of their software, rather than just wanting a cool tech job. After that was a 90 minute hackerrank OA that felt more like an implementation mini-project with SQL and Python instead of abstract algorithms. The onsite was a 4-round loop chosen from decomp, re-engineering, learning, coding, and sys design. Decomp is the most important one - they give you a super vague prompt like designing a chess game or tracking a disease from scratch, and you have to map out the inputs and logic out loud. Re-engineering gives you around 1000 lines of code with a very subtle logical bug to fix, and the learning round drops you into a random API with barely any documentation to see how fast you pick it up lol. Coding was standard LC mediums but they squeeze a 20-minute behavioral chat right into the middle of it, and sys design was heavy on data governance and fault tolerance. The final chat with the hiring manager is pretty intense too ngl. They will actually make you redo parts of the onsite you struggled with. For prep, don't just mindlessly grind LeetCode. Practice reading other people's code fast and structuring ambiguous problems. I got a really good Palantir coach on Prepfully who helped a lot to catch my blind spots and get a reality check before the actual loop. Overall, not very easy though