I applied online. The process took 4 weeks.

Overview: a 30-minute telephone interview, then a take-home programming task taking a couple of hours, followed by a Skype review of that task, and finally in-person interviews consisting of a general technical interview and a group systems design interview. I applied via the website and within a day had an email requesting a 30-minute telephone interview, asking me to give my availability for the next week via a web interface, which I did immediately.

A week later I hadn't heard anything back so began to chase. After 9 days, eventually I had the initial telephone interview booked and had it 14 days after initially applying. The next stage was a take-home programming task, which I did that night and submitted. Again I had to chase them to get to the review process. At this point, I had a few offers with a deadline within 5 days. When they finally saw my emails, they booked me in the next day for in-person interviews, including the task review in person as well, and telephoned me to confirm I was okay with that. The in-person group systems design interview was to design a larger-scale version of the take-home programming task and ensure everybody in the room had an understanding of how it would be built.

Once the hiring team where aware of my deadlines with other offers, I had an offer quickly after the in-person interviews, in time to reject the other offers. Apart from the hiring team being overloaded and slow to respond, all the interviewers where incredibly polite and friendly. It was made clear during the in-person interviews that they where not knowledge tests, but rather questions geared at working out how you think and problem-solve. It was one of the most pleasant interviews I've ever done, and at no time did I feel like I was being grilled, which is quite often the case.

How does TLS work, and how does general networking work?