Applied online. Recruiter call was in a few days. Tech screen went good, but the job I applied to was filled and they transferred me to another role. The interviewer were professional and friendly, but after each onsite round I had major concerns about wanting to join. 2 rounds went atleast ok or better, third round went bad, and in hindsight I dodged a bullet (for my career). Behavioral - barely any leadership or actual behavioral conversations. I won’t go into details, but this was the weirdest interview of this sort I ever been in. Manager was clearly inexperienced and I would have had a tough time building a career in their team. Biggest red flag - was how much of a push back the company seems to have for large scale ai adoption. Coding - dealbreaker where I failed. The interview schedule said x and the interview was for y. I had been prepping and went in for something completely different from what the interviewer wanted to focus on. In normal times I could have answered it well. But a high stakes interview, red flags from other interviews, miscommunicated expectations. Just not the best environment to succeed. That said, another red flag - the interviewer was complaining about how many meetings they had that weeks. And that they were “forced” to attend ai meetings. System design - went decent, I might have fared better in explaining the why, rather than just the how. Scope for improvement but not rejection imo. Minor red flag - how much the interviewer seemed disengaged with the actual work they were doing. Also, did I mention 3 typos and 2 grammatical errors in the schedule email! An ai-averse Eng team, scheduling team who doesn’t have basic proof reading? Sure, it would have been a notable pay bump if I had an offer and joined, but that would have risked career stagnation.

App and screens: - I applied and recruiters reached out within 24 hours. Lightning fast! - Recruiter interview for 30 minutes. - TPS for 1 hour (actual hour). LC Medium. Onsite: I was told SoFi usually has an Object Oriented Design Analysis round, but my team opted to replace this with an additional System Design round, as that gives more signal for Staff+. - 1 coding LC Medium. - 2 System design. If you prep from the regular system design questions, there will be no surprises here. - 1 Hiring Manager/Behavioral: This was actually intense. Manager was very interested in how I navigated stakeholders in previous role, supported the team with ops etc.