The initial phone screening was fairly standard. However, it took several weeks to actually get the next technical interview scheduled.

This is one of the only places where I've had to sign an NDA for the interview process.

The technical interview involved implementing data access in a rolling time window.

The interviewer presented the initial problem fairly unclearly and without much context. He was unable to answer simple follow-up questions when I was trying to clarify the problem and seemed deeply disinterested in actually being there.

I implemented a working first pass of the solution within the first half of the interview and spent the remainder refactoring for performance.

I came away with a pretty negative view of Confluent after this interview, and so it was no surprise to be rejected at this stage.

Advice to Confluent: Please spend some time training up your interviewers – they desperately need some help!

Data access in a time window