Flow Traders

Senior Platform Data Engineer Interview Experience - Amsterdam, Netherlands

October 1, 2022

Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I applied online on the Flow Traders website.

Call from the recruiter
Take-home assignment consists of two parts: a. System design: Design a system to get data from trading systems and make it available for historical analysis. The trading systems provide data in two ways: gRPC and a dump file every minute. b. PySpark code: Given this input, write code to generate the output by joining two dataframes.
Technical interview to discuss the assignment: Mainly focused on my CV and previous experience, and a little bit about the system design solution. The team lead, who was supposed to be in this interview, was on vacation.
Round 2 technical interview: With the team lead and a data engineer, more focused on software engineering and how programming languages work, as they need a very strong data engineer with extended knowledge and experience in data engineering and platform engineering.

All but the last part was OK. I got a rejection a few days later.

Questions

How does Python store data in memory?

How does multithreading work in Python? When you submit a function to the pool, does it start a thread for each function?

How does the programming language handle allocated memory that doesn't have a reference? How does that work?

How does windowing work in Spark?

What type of join do you use to join a big dataset with a small dataset in Spark?

How do we increase topic parallelism in Kafka?

How to handle scaling up and down in Kafka? How to handle decreasing the number of partitions in each topic?

How did you deploy the Spark operator on Kubernetes in your previous job?

How do you prevent duplications/overwriting final data in a Lambda architecture in case the streaming path was down for a while and then got fixed?

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Flow Traders Senior Platform Data Engineer role in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Success Rate

0%

Pass Rate

Flow Traders's interview process for their Senior Platform Data Engineer roles in Amsterdam, Netherlands is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive0%

Neutral0%

Negative100%

Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Flow Traders's Senior Platform Data Engineer interview process in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Flow Traders Work Experiences

Unique environment to work in

Software Developer • Current Employee

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

October 13, 2014

Pros: The interview process is quite unique in the software development department. Rather than focusing on the technical skill set, the process is more oriented towards having the right team fit. If you have the right attitude, there will be plenty of capable people to fill in the gaps you might have from a technical point of view. You can share your ideas, and everything is up for debate. The working hours are very flexible, and it totally depends on you if you want to spend 8 hours or 12 hours to work. After-hours activities are quite often, so there is always some fun to have.

Cons: Processes are sometimes slow, and there are some gaps in communication between departments. If you want something done, you should take the initiative yourself.

Unique environment to work in

Software Developer • Current Employee

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

October 13, 2014

Pros: The interview process is quite unique in the software development department. Rather than focusing on the technical skill set, the process is more oriented towards having the right team fit. If you have the right attitude, there will be plenty of capable people to fill in the gaps you might have from a technical point of view. You can share your ideas, and everything is up for debate. The working hours are very flexible, and it totally depends on you if you want to spend 8 hours or 12 hours to work. After-hours activities are quite often, so there is always some fun to have.

Cons: Processes are sometimes slow, and there are some gaps in communication between departments. If you want something done, you should take the initiative yourself.

Bad lower management

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

November 7, 2017

Pros: Courses and conferences for professional development, free lunch, in-house gym with personal trainers, and massage.

Cons: There is friction between development and trading on one side, and management on the other. Newly formed lower product management is trying to establish themselves, worried about their own position, not caring about the well-being of their team or the product. A lot form, less content. Software engineers are considered an expense, while traders take credit for the profit. Noisy office.

Bad lower management

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

November 7, 2017

Pros: Courses and conferences for professional development, free lunch, in-house gym with personal trainers, and massage.

Cons: There is friction between development and trading on one side, and management on the other. Newly formed lower product management is trying to establish themselves, worried about their own position, not caring about the well-being of their team or the product. A lot form, less content. Software engineers are considered an expense, while traders take credit for the profit. Noisy office.

Great working culture with nice benefits

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Amsterdam, Netherlands

September 4, 2022

Pros: At Flow, I really enjoy the great working environment with bright minds from a diverse set of backgrounds. Of course, the benefits like breakfast, lunch, snacks, gym, and massages are also a plus. But also, the recent improvements within the team structuring facilitate easier communication between departments. So, I see steps into the right direction!

Cons: Sometimes work/projects can have little structure, as the whole company still feels like a start-up.

Great working culture with nice benefits

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Amsterdam, Netherlands

September 4, 2022

Pros: At Flow, I really enjoy the great working environment with bright minds from a diverse set of backgrounds. Of course, the benefits like breakfast, lunch, snacks, gym, and massages are also a plus. But also, the recent improvements within the team structuring facilitate easier communication between departments. So, I see steps into the right direction!

Cons: Sometimes work/projects can have little structure, as the whole company still feels like a start-up.

Unique environment to work in

Software Developer • Current Employee

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

October 13, 2014

Pros: The interview process is quite unique in the software development department. Rather than focusing on the technical skill set, the process is more oriented towards having the right team fit. If you have the right attitude, there will be plenty of capable people to fill in the gaps you might have from a technical point of view. You can share your ideas, and everything is up for debate. The working hours are very flexible, and it totally depends on you if you want to spend 8 hours or 12 hours to work. After-hours activities are quite often, so there is always some fun to have.

Cons: Processes are sometimes slow, and there are some gaps in communication between departments. If you want something done, you should take the initiative yourself.

5.0
Unique environment to work in
Software Developer • Current Employee
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
October 13, 2014
Pros: The interview process is quite unique in the software development department. Rather than focusing on the technical skill set, the process is more oriented towards having the right team fit. If you have the right attitude, there will be plenty of capable people to fill in the gaps you might have from a technical point of view. You can share your ideas, and everything is up for debate. The working hours are very flexible, and it totally depends on you if you want to spend 8 hours or 12 hours to work. After-hours activities are quite often, so there is always some fun to have.
Cons: Processes are sometimes slow, and there are some gaps in communication between departments. If you want something done, you should take the initiative yourself.

Bad lower management

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

November 7, 2017

Pros: Courses and conferences for professional development, free lunch, in-house gym with personal trainers, and massage.

Cons: There is friction between development and trading on one side, and management on the other. Newly formed lower product management is trying to establish themselves, worried about their own position, not caring about the well-being of their team or the product. A lot form, less content. Software engineers are considered an expense, while traders take credit for the profit. Noisy office.

2.0
Bad lower management
Software Engineer • Former Employee
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
November 7, 2017
Pros: Courses and conferences for professional development, free lunch, in-house gym with personal trainers, and massage.
Cons: There is friction between development and trading on one side, and management on the other. Newly formed lower product management is trying to establish themselves, worried about their own position, not caring about the well-being of their team or the product. A lot form, less content. Software engineers are considered an expense, while traders take credit for the profit. Noisy office.

Great working culture with nice benefits

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Amsterdam, Netherlands

September 4, 2022

Pros: At Flow, I really enjoy the great working environment with bright minds from a diverse set of backgrounds. Of course, the benefits like breakfast, lunch, snacks, gym, and massages are also a plus. But also, the recent improvements within the team structuring facilitate easier communication between departments. So, I see steps into the right direction!

Cons: Sometimes work/projects can have little structure, as the whole company still feels like a start-up.

5.0
Great working culture with nice benefits
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Amsterdam, Netherlands
September 4, 2022
Pros: At Flow, I really enjoy the great working environment with bright minds from a diverse set of backgrounds. Of course, the benefits like breakfast, lunch, snacks, gym, and massages are also a plus. But also, the recent improvements within the team structuring facilitate easier communication between departments. So, I see steps into the right direction!
Cons: Sometimes work/projects can have little structure, as the whole company still feels like a start-up.

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