Interview experiences

Adyen Staff Engineer: payments system design and the Adyen Formula

5 rounds. The payments system design is the hard one and the two culture rounds are all Adyen Formula. Got the offer.

Qualcomm Staff Engineer: C/C++ multiple choice, OS and computer architecture deep dives

Very fundamentals-heavy. A timed MCQ on C/C++, OS and computer architecture, then a hiring manager who asks OS questions. Offer.

Nubank Staff Engineer in Toronto: six rounds over two months, from code quality OA to Distributed Message Queue design

6 rounds over 2 months. They grade code quality hard in the OA, then you extend it live. Distributed message queue for design. Accepted.

By Nora Nguyen

SpaceX Staff Engineer: telemetry take-home, project presentation, HashMap from scratch and a Distributed Task Scheduler

Longest loop I've done. Telemetry take-home, a review with senior people, then a project presentation, hashmap LLD and task scheduler HLD.

Deliveroo Staff Engineer: LLD coding round, Flash Sale System design, then a hiring freeze after the DoorDash news

Passed every round, then the DoorDash acquisition landed and the role disappeared. Loop itself was standard: LLD, flash sale design, behavioural.

By Nora Nguyen

Confluent Staff Engineer: Time Based Key-Value Store screen, Metrics Monitoring design and two tough coding rounds

Time-based KV store on the screen, then 4 onsite rounds incl. metrics monitoring design and a nasty function signature matcher. Offer.

By Kenji Santos

Anthropic Staff Engineer: Word Break II, a message ingestion pairing round, a Distributed Task Scheduler design, then a rejection after the hiring manager round

Word Break II, a brutal pairing round on message ingestion, task scheduler design, then hiring manager. Rejected. Have a view on AI safety.

Affirm Staff Engineer: recruiter and HM screens, a recursive revenue HackerRank and a payment processing design with idempotency keys

Standard Affirm loop. Recruiter + HM screens, a recursion problem on HackerRank, then a payment processing design that goes deep on idempotency.

By Camila Patel