I applied via an employee referral for the position at New Relic (United States, Remote). Due to the pandemic, the entire interview process was online. It took about 3 weeks, partially because of the holidays.

The interview process was well-organized and straightforward. The steps were:

• A recruiter screening call
• An interview with the hiring manager
• A take-home coding challenge
• Day-1 interviews:
  • A data structure / coding interview with two engineers
  • A behavioral / cultural fit interview with the hiring manager
• Day-2 interviews:
  • An architecture / system design interview with 2 engineers
  • A problem solving / algorithm design / coding interview with a lead engineer
• The closing conversation with the recruiter

Throughout the entire process, everyone was very welcoming, authentic, and warm. The recruiter made sure the whole process was completely transparent to me. The scheduling emails explained all the details and expectations from both technical and personal standpoints. A sign that the recruiting team truly cares about the candidates: they inserted a lunch break into the long schedule of Day-2.

Overall, it was as pleasant an experience as an interview can be.

Coding Challenge: a high-performance Java application. The description asks for 4-6 hours of your time; expect to spend about twice as much.

Brush up your Java concurrency; it is going to be fun!

Data structure / coding Interview: finding the right data structure from a common developer quiver to represent the data is key.

Architecture / system design: You will design a distributed application using modern architecture.

Problem solving / algorithm design / coding: A type of problem popular on HackerRank or Codility. If your approach requires more than about 20 lines of code, it is likely not a correct path.