Several recruiter calls followed by many tedious and all-encompassing interview stages spread across 2-3 months.

This included:

• 2 screening rounds
• 4-5 interview rounds covering coding (LeetCode-esque), operating systems theory & practice, system design concepts, Linux troubleshooting, and the usual behavioral questions.

Months of prep work is necessary to even have a shot.

I only stuck with the process because the precariously high cost of living in California all but requires a big tech job nowadays.

Coding: string manipulation, list manipulation, file handling. See LeetCode company-tagged problems, but it mostly comes down to luck, i.e., have you seen this before?

Behavioral: The usual "tell me about a time..." questions.

System Design: Won't share too much here, but check out some of the most popular Meta Research papers and conference presentations for ideas on what systems to study.

Operating Systems: A lot comes down to having years of Linux experience, to be honest. Check out Michael Kerrisk's "The Linux Programming Interface," Julia Evans' "Wizard Zines," and play around with a Linux distro for some starting points.

Systems Troubleshooting: Linux system administration knowledge helps a lot here. Use Fernando Duran's SadServers.com for some practice. Check out Brendan Gregg's content and know the "USE Method" and the "Linux Performance Analysis in 60000 Milliseconds" articles by heart.