I applied online.

The Adyen application process was extremely long and, in the end, deeply frustrating. The process consisted of:

• Recruiter interview
• HackerRank assessment (3 hours)
• Technical interview + system design (1.5 hours)
• Leadership interview (1 hour)
• Final HR negotiation

After successfully passing the third round (technical + system design), I was explicitly informed that I would be invited to the Amsterdam office for the leadership interview for a Software Engineer II position. Although I had applied for Software Engineer, they decided to evaluate me for SE II based on my experience and performance.

However, the leadership interview was a major disappointment. Instead of having a balanced discussion across multiple projects and experiences, the manager and lead kept circling around a single challenging project, repeatedly nit-picking details and not allowing me to move on to other work I had done. Despite multiple attempts, I think I was not given a fair chance to present the breadth of my experience.

In the end, they concluded that I “don’t have that much experience” and categorized me as Graduate or Entry-Level, which directly contradicts:

• Their own decision to interview me for SE II
• My performance in earlier technical rounds

This meant that over 6 hours of interviews, plus commuting time, travel costs, and several days of preparation, were effectively wasted due to inconsistent expectations and overly narrow evaluation in the final round. For a company that emphasizes engineering excellence and fairness, this experience felt disorganized, dismissive, and unnecessarily exhausting.

Describe a challenging project in your career.