I was cold-called off my LinkedIn profile, then went through a phone screen. It had two algorithm questions, followed by general personal questions and information about the job.

I was then flown out for an in-person interview. They put me up in a pretty nice hotel within walking distance of the HQ where my interview was taking place. It started off with a written test covering Java fundamentals as well as a short coding problem. I then had seven back-to-back interviews that lasted the rest of the day. (Lunch was purchased for me by the boss of the team I was interviewing for. Over lunch, it was a very informal interview, mostly me asking questions about the job and the team and getting answers.)

The interviews covered asking me to design a program on a whiteboard, code on a whiteboard covering data structures and algorithms, multi-threading, and concurrency, as well as being asked about SQL backend and databases. They hit as many bases as possible. The interviewers were good with coaching and hints. They don't expect you to be perfect, which is really nice. Overall, I'd say I did really well on two of the interviews, good on three of the interviews, just okay on one, and really bombed the last one at the end of the day, but still got the offer.

How would you design a backend SQL database system for very large loads? (I have no database experience, and my resume reflected this, so this question really caught me off guard.)