One of the founders reached out to me to help spin up an infrastructure team in an area that I specialize in. They had gotten my contact information from multiple people internally, who recommended me as someone with a track record of successfully leading teams in the area they needed. After some initial conversations, I agreed to the interview.

My expectation was that for specialized roles and needs, the interview process would be specialized. At my current employer, we do this, and I'm aware of other companies that do the same. Instead, I was put through the same process that any other engineer goes through, covering domains that I've never worked in or specialized in.

I'm not really sure what they were expecting to get out of running me through this process.

I signed an NDA, but you have to know about everything from distributed systems to UI engineering to successfully get through the process.