It was a 2-stage interview.

Stage 1 - Developer skills Felt intense in the sense that I was underprepared with binary searches, sorts, trees, etc. I guess these skills are probably essential for them.

Stage 2 - Linux skills and System design If you get through, then you'll be up for this stage. This stage is even more intense than the one before, if you are not a Linux system admin or evangelist with very good knowledge of Linux OS fundamentals as well as advanced topics like disk protocols.

Overall, it felt to me that the role's advert was ambiguous or a 'want-everything' type, in the sense that they're probably expecting a strong Python developer with exceptional low-level Linux OS knowledge.

Stage 1

Part 1:

• Asking about data structures and algorithms.
• Questions about concurrency and parallelism, both in general and in the context of Python.

Part 2:

• Object-oriented design question, something like "design an airline booking system." Requirements were clear, but the expectation wasn't explicit. For example, would they want to see some code, high-level relationship diagrams, or both?

Stage 2

Deeper understanding and troubleshooting of lower-level network issues, disk protocols, and being super handy with Linux are highly expected.